Last night I didn’t sleep well, tossing and turning between the snoring husband and the upside down snoring dog.  It’s even worse when you can’t sleep and everyone else seems to be having no problem.  So I woke the dog up (revenge is sweet!) and we went out in the living room to look at the lit tree and contemplate.

So many things to think about, projects at work, a new semester, a campaign for legislation in the trucking industry.  Though I had to be at work early this morning and generally wouldn’t be happy to be up early, today I was actually eager to get started.   I have plans for the projects at work, and they are just little projects, no real pressure, I’m excited about a couple of my classes and have begun to read for them already, and I think this is the year to press Congress to make some progress to mandate instalation of onboard recording devices for big trucks.   I feel like it’s time to get going, no time for sleeping!  So I sat out in my dim living room and thought about all the things I need to do, and realized that most of them were things I WANT to do.  What a difference it makes to want to do things rather than dreading the laundry list of things that must be done.

I thought of the thousands of families with huge holes ripped through them who struggle with every holiday and anniversary.  Five thousand people a year lose their lives in truck crashes.  Since Dad died there are another 15,000 people dead, and probably almost as many families that are facing the reality of their loss every day.  I thought about all the causes and all the people fighting to get help for their particular issue and I felt sort of proud of all of us.  It’s easy to be quiet and still in our grief, but it’s impossible to stay that way.  If Dad had died peacefully in his bed of cancer I expect our family woud be lobbying Congress for stem cell research.  It’s just not in us to ignore such issues. 

So I am eager to get moving on this next year of change.  I’ll be graduating this spring, another change, and looking for work again in the real world.  Or as real as the library world gets anyway.  And I’ll continue to work for our cause and hope to make some change there as well.  I think it’s going to be a great year!