New Year. 2018. This is the first year in a long time that I don’t have a detailed list, or lists, of goals. Usually I have professional, then personal goals, sub-headed with writing, reading, speaking; relationships, home, travel, family, friends, hobbies. I’ve even attempted to have my husband, aka National Treasure, join me in the glee (yes. really) of making those lists. He declined.

This year it all just seemed too daunting. 2017 went far too fast, even though it was packed with:

Travel – Kauai, Virginia and DC, Illinois, California

Literary accomplishments – acceptance in two new anthologies:

Happiness – two great-nieces’ graduations and beginning college, an engagement, new babies, new friends.

Sadness – my dear brother-in-law taken from us by cancer, and far too many friends battling this horrible disease.

Professional endeavors – sharing my experiences in editing, public speaking, and stories.

Expanding my horizons – Improvisation classes, Odyssey Storytelling, Tellers of Tales.

Maybe that’s what made it go so fast. There was always something to do, people to meet and enjoy.

So this year, 2018, I’m revising an activity from my teaching plan book, “What I Know- and Don’t Know.”

WHAT I KNOW: I will continue creative writing, blogging, and submitting my work for publication, and sharing what I know. I will make self-care a priority. I will take time to spend time with people I care about. I will try things I’ve never done before. I will start tap dancing again. I will travel to Europe, California, Chicago, and the East Coast- from VA to MA. (Fair warning to all my contacts in VA, DC, PA, NJ, NY (that means LI, NYC, and upstate), MA. I’ll even make a stop on Staten Island to visit my alma mater Wagner College. After all these years, I want to walk on the Oval again and marvel in person at the changes I’ve seen online.

WHAT I DON’T KNOW: Exactly how all this will unfold. What else might be gifted to me.

WHAT I’M WILLING TO TRUST IN: The best is yet to come.

What do you know about 2018?

Ethel Lee-Miller blogs regularly about people, the power of words, and the writing life. She is the author of Thinking of Miller Place, and Seedlings, Stories of Relationships.