New Years New Things

New years are good times for new things. Great times in fact for great things like new jobs. The day after new years day I will pack my first lunch, wave goodbye to my two favourite faces and walk three blocks for my first full day of not-at-home work in almost twenty-months. I am excited and I am ready. 

I am excited to work for an amazing organization. I am excited to be able to contribute to the work they do and to be part of their creative processes. I am excited to begin to think about new ways to scale old walls  and excited to work at a place that is okay with a flexible schedule and lots of work done from home. I am excited for a new office, a fresh bulletin board, and a crisp white notebook. I am most excited though for work that will be meaningful because that's the best kind. 

And I am ready. Conversations about this job started a long time ago. Well before Miss Frances turned one. Even then it was a wonderful opportunity in a place where wonderful opportunities don't often pick up the phone and give you a call. As much as I was not ready and as much as I could feel my heart breaking in two I said Yes. I can start now. But some things happened. Some things that they had to figure out. Some things that took ten months. Some things and months that let me step one step at a time towards this space of perfect readiness. 

I do still wonder about the day-to-day of it all. Where will these hours for this new work come from? Most days we rise with the sun and fall into bed shortly after the bumble. We're so tired at the end of each one that we no longer care how uncool it is to be this young and this tired at such an early hour. We just want to go to bed. The new year brings with it less time for errands, less time for this self-dirtying house, and less time to think about and shop for and ready tasty healthy foods. It also brings a lot of wondering about how Frances will adjust to the changes. Until then, until we look back on this adjustment with pride and certainty about our success, I will remind myself often that we'll make it. We'll try things one way and if that doesn't work we'll try them another way. And another and another until we find that sweet spot where everyone is happy and everyone thrives.   

As the new year and this new job nears, I also find myself looking back and thinking about how grateful I am for this time spent at home with a small and then not-so-small bean. Grateful for time to just be. To live in a country that does today (although not perfectly and sometimes begrudgingly) value that first fleeting year of life and the bonds and love forged therein. And I am really, really (really) grateful for Rob, who, as the end of her first year approached and I weighed unappealing job against unappealing job, said, take your time, don't rush, you don't need something right now, something perfect will come along. And what do you know, something did.