Natasha Fondren

It’s been quite a year. To sum up, I’m glad it’s over, I’m happy at how I’ve changed my life, I’m tired of change, I’m thrilled at how well my eBook company, the eBook Artisans^TM, is doing, I love my job, I’m sad I didn’t—as Neil Gaiman says—kiss someone who thinks I’m wonderful, and I GOT A PUPPY!

My year in Facebook statuses:

And every few years, I post my favorite blessing for the New Year by Neil Gaiman. I don’t really have any resolutions this year, and to be honest, I want everything in his benediction—especially to kiss someone who thinks I’m wonderful.

“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art—write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. May your coming year be a wonderful thing in which you dream both dangerously and outrageously.

I hope you’ll make something that didn’t exist before you made it, that you will be loved and you will be liked, and you will have people to love and to like in return. And most importantly, because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now—I hope that you will, when you need to be, be wise, and that you will always be kind. And I hope that somewhere, in the next year, you surprise yourself.”

Isn’t that the best ever? Here he is, reading it.

And what is your wish for the new year?

There’s always something. You know those people? The ones who… just seem to be attractants for bad luck. Things always happen. Some self-caused, some not, but the whole package deal makes you look and shake your head and wonder what they’re doing to attract that kind of life.

I was born one of them, but we’ll just skip over the childhood drama, of which there was a lot, and the seven or eight years of illness in my twenties, which is pretty much me just sitting in bed.

I remember one good friend from high school, getting really perturbed and throwing up her hands in the air and saying, “You can never just go somewhere, can you? Something always happens! Every time we go somewhere, something happens!”

Glenn was the same way when we first met. He liked to wait for when “all our ducks are in a row.”

Let’s put it this way: after living with me for eight years, he has stopped using that phrase, and has not mentioned even attempting to get all our ducks in a row.

My point is, I’m sick of being one of those people. I want an easy life. I want a nice, predictable life. I want order. I want security. I want a life like my best friend, who has a daughter and a husband and a family and a secure job and income and house and she’s most oftentimes happy. She’s blessed, sure, and she’s had hardship, for sure, but… her life is definitely not there’s always something.

Maybe this might seem to contradict with the desire to upgrade my RV so we can live on the road, but even that “adventure” can be done in an easy, relaxed, almost-predictable way. You know?

When I was little, for some odd reason, I became convinced that the first half of my life would be hell, and the second half would be easy-peasy and wonderful.

I thought this would happen when I was thirty. And then when I was thirty-five.

I think I made the first steps when I was thirty-five, but now I’m thirty-six. And while there’s not always something, there’s still often something. It’s clear that somehow, I have no idea how, I’m going to have to force the issue. I am tired of waiting.

A good portion of these things that happen have not been my fault, but plenty of what has happened to me has been my fault. I try to find a way it’s my fault, at least, because that gives me the power to change things.

So anyway, that’s my number one goal for the year. I want an easy life. I have no idea how to get it, but that’s my goal.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

How do you make your life so that there’s not always something? Do you know people where there’s always something? Have you been one? How did you… stop it? What’s your number one “idea” goal for this year?