This year – 2017 – so much has happened, personally, professionally. So many changes, so many challenges, so many new things that I have tried.
I have travelled to India, Canada, France, USA, Netherlands, Denmark, Spain, Malta, I have lived all around the UK – in flats, in houses, in cities, towns and the countryside. Moving on, moving on, all the time.
My friends have been my safety net, my front row, my supporters, bringing me encouragement, reminding me of what I want to be and what I am. I think of my long standing friends, and also friendships renewed across the years, and new friends, people I have met for the first time in 2017, yet feel I have known forever. Some encounters built on years of friendship, some encounters were only of minutes in length. Souls touching and parting, linked now only by the tenuous threads of memory.
I have stretched, grown, released tired and knotted muscles, been still and moved swiftly, listened and spoken, laughed and wept, started to spin the threads that I will weave to fabric and sew into a new patchwork quilt of a new life. And now, at the end of the year – I am. I am an expert, I am a student. I am a thinker, I am a comedian. I am a sewer, I am a painter. I am a writer, I am a musician. I am a dancer, I am a swimmer. I am a listener, I am a speaker. All these things I have done, some not so well, but all of these things I have done.
2017 has been an extraordinary year – my life has changed. I acknowledge that I have much to be grateful for in my life: my energy, my friends, everything that has happened. I acknowledge the suffering and pain so many in the world feel, and hope for its cessation.
“Looking forward and not back” says one of my friends, and that is the watchwords – after this brief review, this acknowledgement that 2017 has been a year of personal growth, of creativity, of energy, of growing to know myself better.
What will 2018 bring? What do I want and what can I achieve?
Look back, see the past
landscape clear. Looking forward:
new path starting now.
Isabel Evans writing 