Beginnings: Celebrating the New Year on the Mississippi Gulf Coast

Beginning is difficult, and our procrastination is a fine ever-present measure of our reluctance in taking that first close-in, courageous step to reclaiming our happiness. Perhaps, because taking a new step always leads to a kind of radical internal simplification, where, suddenly, very large parts of us, parts of us we’ve kept gainfully employed for years, parts of us still rehearsing the old complicated story, are suddenly out of a job.

-David Whyte

We spent the New Years Eve and the following 2 days along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, intending to continue our beach walking regime and also do some sightseeing. While we managed to do both however, we had 3 days of pretty serious rain and thunderstorms – enough so that the noise (and our scared dog) kept us awake long enough to actually ring in the new year. During drier moments we drove out along Highway 90 through Biloxi and towns such as Ocean Springs and Bay St. Louis where Tom showed me more of the chainsaw sculptures carved into the live oak stumps, some homes rebuilt after Katrina perched 20 feet on stilts, and the canals that link residential neighborhoods to the Gulf. There were also many hours walking on the beaches watching Abby frolic.

But though we did get out a fair bit there were many hours of reading and thinking and journaling. Considerations regarding my self-limiting mindset that were begun in the finals days of our Las Cruces build started intersecting with contemplation of New Year intentions while we were staying at Padre Island Seashore – musings I’m still pondering even now as I’ve been thinking and reading and re-reading and writing. Thus, rather than keeping up with blogging about our activities I’ve been instead relishing the hours of solace in addition to enjoying what’s been happening around me as we’ve traveled from Mississippi to Louisiana and have now started our next Habitat build.

I’m still reflecting on a whole lot of everything right now and am in the midst of refining how I want my life to look like going forward — particularly how I want to be even more deliberate in how I spend my time in service of doing what’s important to me — but I have most certainly committed to challenging myself to make the life I want in 2017 and beyond. And a part of that is recognizing when I’m caught up in the “old complicated story” as referenced in the quote above and letting the narrative go, because my time and my energy can be much better spent – on seizing opportunities and embarking on new adventures.