Another year you made a promise
Another chance to turn it all around
And do not save this for tomorrow
Embrace the past and you can live for now
And I will give the world to you

Speak louder than the words before you
And give them meaning no one else has found
The role we play is so important
We are the voices of the underground
And I will give the world to you
~A Great Big World: This is the New Year

Happy New Year! Fine, so…happy January 9th! Yes, yes, yes…I’m a little late to the new year game. As a list-lover and a typical sharer of all things personal and private, you’d have thought I’d relish in this time of year. It’s the time to share! It’s the time to preach! It’s the time to tell you how awesome I am! It’s the time to retreat! Retreat? What? Retreat?! What?! Blasphemy!

If you know me, you know I’m prone to playing the disappearing act. It usually happens when I’m highly stressed or highly happy. Or in this case, highly present. Instead of feeling introspective or inspirational, these moments make me focus solely on what’s happening to me and in front of me. Case in point. Over the holidays I didn’t write. I didn’t write at all. I had some moments of hilarity on social media, but even that was sparse for me. I didn’t want to verbalize or over-share or rejoice en mass.

Instead, I relished in my ‘now’. The child was here, the husband was here, the dogs were here. We day drank and Tuesday drank, we enjoyed the spoils of our new friends and neighbors, we indulged uncharacteristically and gluttonously in gluten and sugar, we laughed with family from afar, we lounged mornings in bed and evenings in front of the picture box, we played poker, we went to the gym randomly at 9am and 3pm, and I luxuriously and selfishly read a 700-page novel. In fact, I carried the hardbound tome with me everywhere – to read in lines, while waiting in the car, in front of the TV, and while sitting in Barnes and Noble while my boys went to the theater.

“Time isn’t precious at all, because it is an illusion. What you perceive as precious is not time but the one point that is out of time: the Now. That is precious indeed. The more you are focused on time—past and future—the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is,” reminds Eckhart Tolle in my peacekeeper, The Power of Now.

There is a time to be silent; there is a time to speak louder than the words before you. This is the New Year.