The Year of Living Dangerously

by Jill MacGregor

I’m finding that I like to designate a new year *The Year of Fill InThe Blank* before I get too far into it. Sort of give it a theme, like a ride at Disneyland. It keeps me focused, as if someone’s posted a sign I can always glance up at in case I’ve forgotten what I need to be doing next.

This has been such an interesting last year and a very different year than I’ve had in a long time. I felt myself ramping during 2009. Making changes and having changes made all around me that put me in a unique position to (voraciously) need to know the inner workings of things around me in a new way. NEED TO KNOW like a starving person. I’m not sure why what brought this on. Therefore, 2009 was appointed The Year of Learning.

I felt this overwhelming need to be smarter in 2009.

Don’t get excited– I still round up on fractions (learned that from baking) and my high school friend, Anne, will make a very sad face while explaining my difficulties with Algebra…blah…

In 2009, I caught a sense of the speed the world was moving at, how it was picking up speed everyday and I didn’t find it scary. I found it thrilling. I understood in my bones that there was more I needed to know so that I could keep up with all this spinning.

Year of Learning.

So, what is this year supposed to be? It seems really important to label it…like the Chinese do. Some ideas:

Lovely choices, and annoying accurate, but possibly not what I’m looking for.

When I think about what the focus of this year should be, I want to see myself at the end of it, on December 31st, breathing a contented sign and feeling like my life is so much better than when the year started. That was how it felt this Dec 31st and I liked it. Maybe this coming year should be:

Honestly, The Year of Learning will continue, because once you start a practice like that it’s difficult to stop. The monster must be fed.

And if the only one holding me back is me—I guess the question is really how big can I make this year. How can I make enormity look small?

Oh my…I have to sit down.

Maybe this could be The Year of Risk.

Let me take a moment and step back. Sometimes when I ask myself big questions like this or when I lay my little head on the pillow, I find myself back in Hong Kong, for some strange reason. It’s not because I lived there for an extended period of time or even had a significant experience there. I did go there last year for business and pleasure and certainly enjoyed my trip…but didn’t feel a big urge to return to Hong Kong.

So why do very palpable memories come flooding back? I smell the streets, I feel the heat, I know what to expect around the corner where my mind’s eye has taken me…

Maybe it’s because I was a stranger there. I was foreign.

And I got lost a lot.

I really love those two things—being foreign and getting lost in a strange land. It turns you on your head and forces you outside your comfort zone. I am very comfortable outside of my comfort zone…well, maybe outside of someone’s comfort zone. It seems like there’s something about not understanding that makes you realize that you are on the verge of understanding something really big.

Perhaps I should call this The Year of Being on the Verge of Understanding Something Really Big.

That could do with some editing.

While I ponder my year, I’d love to hear what you think the focus of your year is going to be. Shout it out!