I’m guest posting over at The Carpe Diem blog from time to time now…I’ve just posted a piece about my cooking experiments  Why don’t you pop over and take a look…

I think I probably say this every year, but where the heck has this year gone?? It’s finally feeling like Summer here in Canberra, I’ve finished work for the year, and Christmas is done and dusted.

To be honest, I really don’t want to do this. I don’t have the energy. I’m glad this year is over, but I think maybe I need the closure of giving it one final look to see how it all fit together.

You might remember last year that I developed a model of recognising the priorities in my life by eliminating the hierarchical lists that I had used previously, and using a wheel metaphor. I’ll use these elements as the basis for my year in review.

The Foundations (spokes)

Physical health

I had a rotten year health-wise. A couple of colds one on top of the other, suspected whooping cough, bells palsy, a shoulder problem that took some detective work to treat, and a couple of calf strains along the way. At times in the dead of winter it felt like I was going to be sick for ages. But I survived

Mental health

Constant stress became an issue for me this year, to the point where my body gave in and made me take a break. Never a fun place to be. On the positive side though, I learned to manage my depression and moods with better food choices and lots of exercise.

Spiritual Health

This is tricky, and there’s probably enough material for several blog posts in this one. I’m not quite ready (or able perhaps) to articulate where my heart and head is at in the midst of this little faith crisis I find myself in. For the moment, let’s just say that I had the deepest spiritual experience of my year in the echoing caverns of a medieval Catholic cathedral. Liturgy and mystics are fascinating me at the moment.

Relational Health

I have had to force myself to be sociable this year. The more stressed I have become, the more alone I want to be. I have had to fight to retain some semblance of community and not turn into the hermit I so desperately wanted to become at times.

The Passions

Family

My boys are growing up! This year they both passed me in height! Finding ways to spend quality time with each of them has been fun and challenging as they grow into young men. Motherhood is never the same from year to year…or even week to week…it is an evolving role that I am trying my best to keep up with.

Friends

I have been blessed with a whole bunch of new and very diverse friends on Twitter this year. Some local, some national, some international. They are always there to cheer me on or to provide a collective shoulder to cry on if I need that. Having the opportunity to interact with a wider range of people has been wonderful. I have also been gifted with a great new friend at work…we are partners in mischief, and providers of sanity for each other. Possibly the best thing is that she understands my introverted tendancies and doesn’t freak out  I have not laughed so hard in a very long time…what a breath of fresh air she is!

Creativity

I started adding watercolour to my journalling this year! I journalled both our Tassie trip and our France trip and loved the way recording my holidays in this way cemented the various elements of the trip for me. Looking back over the sketchbooks now brings back all sorts of amazing memories. Travelling to France was the highlight of my creative year. It fed my inner artist like nothing I’ve ever experienced.

Fitness

In spite of the numerous health setbacks this year, I managed to hit my goal of 2000kms under my own steam (bike, run, kayak) for the year. I developed my mountainbiking technical skills and revelled in the opportunity to push my body to the limits and swim in the rush of adrenaline after conquering obstacles. I remain addicted to cycling as quite possibly the best sanity maintenance tool I have access to.

Learning

Life got too busy to make this one a priority in a formal sense this year. I suspended my theology studies in the second half of the year due to travel and illness, and I didn’t have the energy to read a great deal either. To a degree I think my learning was somewhat deconstructed. I feel as though I’ve gone backwards. Or perhaps I have been learning on another plane that is less measurable and observable.

A Year Without Goals

This year I tried a new approach to planning my year, and I felt a little bit adrift at the beginning of the year without my list of must-dos for the year, but at this end of the year I am grateful for the brain space it has allowed me in not feeling like a failure because I couldn’t achieve what I wanted to. I think part of my problem this year was that I lost sight of my passions in favour of the requriements that other people put on my life. I aim to rectify that next year.

Even though I started out the year without any lists of concrete goals like I normally would, I sort of ended up with some pseudo-goals in the form of my bucket list, but I didn’t feel the need to constantly analyse the goals or measure myself up against them. If I did them, I ticked them off. I got through about two-thirds of the bucket list. You can see which ones I ticked off in the picture. I feel terrific about the ones I achieved…that’s to be expected really, but what has really surprised me is that I’m not particularly bent out of shape about the ones that I didn’t get to tick off. They’re not going anywhere…I’ll just see if I can do them next year…or not…

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Overall I am just glad to have made it to the end of the year in one piece. It has been a challenging one on so many fronts. My head knows that these are the times we learn the most, but my heart and soul are calling out for respite. I am trusting that the holidays will afford me the time and space to find some measure of peace and order.

Yesterday I climbed Mt Kosciusko…Australia’s highest mountain!

We actually tried twice and succeeded once. The first time was cut short by miserably cold and wet weather. The second time took Aiden and I four and a half hours to climb to the summit and get back to the top of the chair lift.

I thought Kosi itself was pretty unimpressive, but the views from the top were amazing and I had a great afternoon of mum and son time with my oldest boy.

Very pleased to have crossed another thing off my bucket list!

It would have been nice if my first post back after the trip was about the trip…but it’s not.

We’ve been back a month already. Can you believe it? I can’t. It didn’t take long to get back into the routine of work and life.

I thought I had taken a good amount of time to rest and recover during the break, dealt with some stressors and was feeling good about being in control of the way life/work was heading. I was feeling positive and excited for the future. I thought i was on the right track. My body apparently  has other ideas though. It thinks it’s stressed enough to start making me ill.

On Monday morning I thought I was having a stroke (ok, so I’m prone to a little drama queen action in my head LOL but still…can’t be too careful) …half of my face was tingly and sort of burning in places, my head was pounding and I was getting pins and needs in my arm/hand on the same side. So I went to work (smart huh?) … by mid morning I decided that I probably should see a doctor, and by lunchtime I was sitting in the doctor’s office being poked and prodded. As it turns out my brain is not exploding…I appear to be having a return visit from my old friend Bell’s Palsy (although the doctor did say to watch out for stroke symptoms and go straight to hospital if necessary…yikes). I say return, because I had the initial episode when I was 15, brought on by a virus invading my cranial nerve.

High-dose steroids is the order of the day treatment-wise to attempt to stop it early. There’s no way of knowing how severe the symptoms might get at this stage…I’m hoping not to go the whole Salvadore Dali melting face look…but you never know. For now its facial numbness, and some droopy bits (could write that off to old age I guess) but I’m not drooling just yet.

So…I’ve taken some time off work to give my body the best chance of resting and recovering. Now I just need to figure out how to turn off my brain and thus the attendant stress of letting people down when there’s lots of work to be done. The people-pleaser that dwells within needs to be taken down a peg or two me thinks. Health first. Everything else can wait. (there’s a mantra to chant in there somewhere) My life coach will probably be unsurprised.

I promise stories about our trip will come…soon…but first I need to rest and recover. If you’re the praying type I’d appreciate your prayers.

Well! Only a couple of hours and we’ll be jetting off for our 16 day adventure in France. I won’t be blogging here until after we return, but I’ll be posting sketches and photos to a dedicated Flickr album if you would like to follow along for the adventure. Click on the picture below to be taken to my France 2011 set.