Well. It’s been a hot minute, hasn’t it?

One weird thing about getting divorced (she says casually, dropping it in there light and airy like cotton candy) is that it’s hard to know who your friends are anymore. I mean, no one really wishes you ill, but there is a line now dividing people I felt I could confess to, looking down, shuffling my feet, like a failure, and people who I just didn’t know how to tell, so I didn’t.

I mean, it’s not like you can take out engraved invites or anything. Save the date! RSVP! I’m registered at Value Village!

Anyway.

This blog has always been a lovely space for me to talk about me, and share that with people who only know me, people who don’t neessarily see me as only half of a whole now. And I’m still me.

I’m pretty sure.

(In fact, I’m kind of becoming an awesome version of me, so it’s nice to come home, even if it does kind of feel like the beginning of a romantic comedy where the small town girl couldn’t hack it in the big city, and now must lick her wounds in a safe place, surounded by nagging but loving family members and her sassy best friend who deserves a better storyline. Do call me when the cute bookstore owner / local sheriff / kindergarten teacher enters the scene, won’t you?)

Anyway.

I like having a word of the year, and this year, when everything is new, everything is different, everything is a fucking RESET, I’m going with this one:

PROMISE.

Because I have promise, and this life has promise, and even though I am, as they say, on the way down the far side of the hill, I still feel like there is forward motion to be made.

I can still fulfill all the promise of my youth. There’s still time, and no time like the present.

That’s my promise to myself.

Let’s see where this wide-open, undefined, glorious year will take me.