A Reflection

As we close into the end of the year, I can  safely say that I failed every single one of my 2017 goals save one. I did read over 100 YA novels. (yay me!) Overall though, I will probably finish up somewhere around 123 books (give or take a couple), almost all of them YA, only one nonfiction and about five or so books of poetry....specifically novels in verse. Sometime around August the blog started to seriously lapse, and I had a hard time starting back up, though I did try several times. Any other sort of writing went right off the table almost from the word go. So yeah, that adds up to a hard fail on stated goals.

In the past, when something like this has happened I've restarted the blog and wiped the slate clean. I have been seriously considering doing that again, but in the end I think I will hold on to the tainted past and forge ahead. We are, after all, ultimately defined by our pasts and I don't want to be the kind of person who shies away from looking at where I've been.

So here I am.

Some years, I think, we change more than in others. We do more growing and more reflecting. I feel like this has been one of those years for me. (Which is probably why I failed so many of my stated goals lol) I've really grown into the sense of myself as a mother even though there are still times I find it overwhelming and alien. I've also really started to feel like a teacher in the core of my being. The transition to department head has been a bit fraught more in the sense of identity than anything else. It was rather alarming to discover how little it actually felt like a change. It's like I grew up sometime when I wasn't looking and had to get to know the adult me.

I think my mother would say I was always the adult me, even when I was a kid.

So, looking forward. I'm in the process of formulating goals for 2018. My priorities have shifted, no doubt, but I suspect they will still have many similarities to previous years. I believe I am going to create an offshoot of this blog that is mostly crosspostings of the book reviews/reflections that I can post directly to my classroom pages for the use of my students.  I don't know how that will evolve, but I don't intend to post anything there that hasn't been posted here.

Thus ends "The State of the Lydia" for 2017