Acknowledge and Embrace the New Year

Ready About for 2025!

Cast the Lines and Let’s Go!

Bon Voyage to 2024!

The last month of the year is filled with excitement, parties, shopping, food, celebrations, gifts and caroling. While I embrace all these festivities, I try to sneak in a little time of reflection on the past year. In practicing my Uncapsize Perspective, the twelfth motion asks the reader to navigate their path forward to a safe harbor using navigational beacons and the slogan, “red-right-return” To stay in the channel or on the path home.

This is what I love best about December, the return home to spend the holidays with family and celebrate the season of giving with friends. This year will be different for me. I have experienced the quiet of the empty nest and embraced the new sense of purpose and freedom. I get to experience and enjoy the thrill of my boys returning right where they belong. For just a little while I will be at peace knowing they are at home in a safe harbor. Their visit included sleeping all day where they stop doing everything by doing nothing except a return to some old food familiarities and comfy beds.

This year I am feeling more goal oriented than ever. This will be a year of firsts for me. As the first of the year, I will begin my first full year as an empty nester. I am pretty good with that too. Ove the last week or so, I have done a little inventory on the last year, reviewed my capsizes or calamities and how I uncapsized these moments to evaluate what floated and what has stunk, I mean sunk. This perspective allows me to make some exciting goals for the next year. Goals keep me going. Goals keep me moving forward, goals help me finish This me boat isn’t going backwards.

A quick trip back through my year starting in January included a surprise college acceptance for my son to West Virginia University. I had no idea he had applied and after a quick visit, he signed on the spot. This was my first experience of losing control. We had carefully cultivated colleges in the northeast, and he abandoned all of them. I spent the short month of February working through the second motion in my Uncapsize Perspective; the make a choice motion. I had to choose to accept that my son would be attending college not in the northeast and one with a reputation of being a party school. Honestly, are there any schools, that aren’t a place of fun? He wanted the full college experience despite despising school, work, going to class etc. I had to choose over and over again to accept his choice. I eventually did.

March and April were filled with grabbing onto all the information I could find about a trip out west. We had planned a family trip to see the national parks. I embraced my purpose for doing which became our trip out west. I researched, asked questions and planned my heart out. I felt like I was planning our annual Disney trip, which we hadn’t done since the pandemic. I embraced the fun of it all during the dreary winter months.

In May, we gathered our crew and family to celebrate Max’s graduation from high school. Just before Max’s name was called out, a brief medical emergency and rescue at the stadium reminded thousands of us of the fragility of life. This proud moment twinned with his older brother’s graduation two years earlier. They even let me take a photo of the two of them with their diplomas! My boy crew of two.

In June, we cast out our lines and flew out to the west coast, saw the ocean and followed the map I drew up. We hiked mountains, rode UTV’s and went on a bear hunt. I saw two! The moose were my favorite and old faithful did not disappoint. I whitewater rafted the Snake River and stood atop the Tetons in the snow for my fifty-first birthday all in one magical day!

The seventh month is all about balance in the Uncapsize Perspective and I worked hard to keep myself from teetering as I felt the anxiety of the fledging fleeing from me. I balanced anxiety with sports including golf, pickleball, tennis, and long walks. The ups and downs of reeling in the graduate, who decided to buy a boat with his chick fil a money persisted. One word, terrifying. Ok, I’ll admit it, the boat was fun, and it brought me great joy to see the brothers getting along and even getting up at 4:30 am to go fishing. I will never forget seeing him put on ski gloves to carve his fish. So, a second word. Priceless. I’ll toss in one more word, jealousy. I was a wee bit jealous he had a boat, even if it was a power boat!

Motion eight of the perspective required me to spend time jumping into new things In August. We jumped aboard a Disney cruise for my in-laws 50th wedding anniversary. The last cruise we did was for our anniversary 22 years ago to Bermuda. Who knew our old ship would be in Nassau when we docked! We did some snorkeling; turtle watching and even fed the swimming pigs on a private island. Yes, they do poop in the water, but it wasn’t that gross. It was fun to yell poop scoop!

Month nine is all about observing the motion around me. It has always been the time when the kids go back to school, and I have time to look around and figure out what needs to be done before moving onto the next thing. Like the ship captain, I am looking through the telescope to see what is out there. I saw my house clutter clear as day after fifteen years of living in it.

I began the declutter of the house, my car, the garden, but most especially the junk drawers and cabinets. I didn’t quite get to the dreaded guest closet or the basement yet! But I have time this year, so I will put that on one of my many lists.

This Tiller list gives me some direction and includes some of the things I learned, loved, embraced and rejoiced this past year:

I learned how to publish a book! I did that. While it is not perfect (see the December Blog) I learned a lot. I loved seeing the book, This Spine of Mine in print. I loved seeing my mom’s face light up when she held the authors copy in her hands. While I embraced the challenge of editing the book to perfection, I rejoiced in letting go of that book and getting started on a new project, my Dad’s book. I rejoiced getting to spend my mother’s birthday at a dinner for Jacques Pepin’s birthday. We had so much fun, a memory for the books!

This brings me to red, right and back to return to the end of the year or back in the safe harbor whcis is where I am. The only thing I had left to do was log my goals for next year. Here are a few of mine to Uncapsize in the upcoming new year. I have twelve. One for each month. My other goal is to complete one project a month. I know it’s a lot, but I need a year of finishes.

Publish the Uncapsize Perspective by April
Complete the Uncapsize your Story-Write the Book and Workbook
Illustrate and publish Gannet Be Done picture Book
Illustrate and publish Albert and Ross picture book
Illustrate and publish, Pelican Can picture book
The Sunday Sail Illustrated by m
Find an illustrator for Captain Seabury and the Serpent
Write and submit Up Lincoln’s Steps
Set up courses to go with Uncapsize your Story
South Coast Artist Studio Tours 2025

There, my goals-not resolutions are all in print and written in this BLAHG (boat log and happy gratitude’s with a Massachusetts accent). We are now moving into the beginning of the next year, so I can conclude my review. I have completed motion thirteen where I have left it all on the page and the screen by bailing out all my thoughts from in between my ears for the last year!

Onward to January! My hope for you is to acknowledge your new goals and accept or recycle the old goals! Embrace the new year, the new you and the things you are going to do! Let your PFD (Purpose for Doing) keep you afloat! As the captain of this BLAHG (boat log and happy gratitude’s), I shout Ready About! (That means, “turning direction, let’s go!” in sailor speak:) If you would like to see these UNCAPSIZE yourself Perspectives, I have one sheet overview HERE.

Happy New Year!

Amy (Duck) Duckworth

Amy Harrington