Year-end musings as the dawn of a New Year creeps over the horizon

Hello friends!

I hope that the Christmas season has treated you well, and that even if you don’t celebrate the festival, you have enjoyed the long weekend break. It is a good time to get together with family or friends, or better yet, to stay home and recharge.

A brand new year is around the corner, and I had high hopes of being right here, talking to you about beauty and pretty things till the year end. But as they say, Man proposes but God disposes. Something personal has come up and I’d like to just take a little time to myself for now. I’d like to leave you instead with a bit of year-end musing on 2016.

Is there a thing as a “really bad year”? I suppose there isn’t. If it’s a bad year for me, I’m sure it’s an amazing year for someone else. The universe finds its equilibrium that way.

When I looked back on 2015, I looked back on a very tumultuous year. 2016 wasn’t too different. For me, it’s been a year of drastic change and eventually acceptance. I spent the most part of the year with a cold lump of resentment festering in my chest. WHY ME?! It’s never a question you should ask yourself. I spent a lot of time brooding and nurturing the ugly whispers of negativity within my soul. I wasn’t happy.

But as the year started drawing to a close, I decided to face the ugliness and beat it back. I could withdraw, and let it take over, or I could fight back, and regain some modicum of personal peace. I could allow someone else to dictate my own happiness, or I could make my own happiness. I could ask WHY ME? or I could ask WHAT CAN I DO TO STAY HAPPY? and do it. I remembered what I told myself at the start of 2016, and as the year was ending, I finally found acceptance to put it into action.

An ugly person left an ugly comment on that 2015 post that I’ve never published, but never deleted. I keep it as a reminder that this ugly person exists as a thorn in my side, who has so little joy in their life that they feel the need to pull others into their cesspit. It’s a reminder that I am so much better than that person wallowing in their cesspit, trying to get their claws in me.

There were many things I had to accept even if I did not want to. But there were also many things I could and should change, both about myself and about everything around me. You just need to WANT that change.

I know I kick-ass. I just have to keep telling myself that I do, and that I should go out there and continue to kick ass. I may not be the sleekest superhero in a slinky catsuit (I’d need some serious Spanx and corsetry) but hell, I’m good at what I do.

And you know what? So are you.

To everyone who’s had a challenging year, take heart. The year is almost over, and a new one dawns soon. You choose your own path – always remember that. No one can choose it for you. Even if you don’t pick a rose-strewn path, try not to pick the path that’s full of brambles; or if you do, be like me – arm yourself with a parang and hack away till you see a path open up before you – sometimes, we just have to do what we have to, to clear our paths and find our own happiness 🙂

Thank you for being with me in 2016, and for giving me a reason to keep blogging. The thing about blogging, that’s so different from any other form of social media is this – YOU. The readers who read, leave a comment and talk to you, and share their stories. Instagram and Facebook can kiss my ass because I’m not going to throw money down the drain to build the numbers to fool people. I want to invest that in MY blog. Every comment you leave here on my blog is an affirmation of my conviction that I’m doing the right thing, and an affirmation of why I should keep on blogging. I bloody well kick-ass at it too! 😉

For the first time in recent years, I can confidently tell you that I am looking forward to being back here at My Women Stuff in 2017, and I hope you will be back with me then too for another ride 🙂

Happy New Year, my friends!

xoxo

Paris B