How wonderful to be on Christmas break. Time off. This year could not be any more different than last year. Sam and I are celebrating by ourselves (not to be confused with alone). We decided to not have a Christmas tree, not buy any gifts, and not any traditional Swedish food. Just calm, peace, contemplative.

Dad´s candles

I really expected no gifts too, but we have a few laying on our table waiting to be opened. My coworkers gave me a little giftbag with goodies and from across the ocean came homebaked cookies from Maxima. The thoughtfullness overwhelms me!

I think most people start to think about the year that passed and what they would like to be or do next year. Every year at this time most people go through a mini-existential crisis. We evaluate the meaningfulness in our lives, think about resolutions.

This year I am allowing myself to go into these thoughts and feelings fully. I am reading Tuesdays with Morrie, and I am going back to writings and books by C. S. Lewis. I write in my journal (which I do about 2 or 3 times a year)! I do for myself what I do for my clients. I specify what it is that I want to be, what I think is most important. Then I write down what I do and how I act that reflects what is most important. I write what I want to do more of in order to get closer to the core of things. Finally I tell myself what one act I need to do every day. Simple things! Not complicated stuff. I try to make it easy for me. Not change major parts of my life all at once, which would make it likely to fail.

I try to take one step in the direction I want to be and after a year or maybe several years I will hopefully find that the little correction will have put me in a spot far away from the road I was going.

So no resolutions just some tweaking and sharpening. Just making myself more conscious of what I am doing and what I am not doing.

Here is a qoute from Tuesdays with Morrie:

“So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half asleep, even when they are busy doing things they think are important. This is because they’re chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.”

I have to add that I can be doing all those things and still not get meaning into my life. We have an ability to make concrete things so abstract. I look at our manger (with the gift knocked out of the wisemans hands) and I thank my creator for making what we make abstract into something very concrete.

(pictures were taken in October)