“This clock never seemed so alive”

Pardon my morbidness, but hasn’t 2019 felt like a decade than just the punctuation to one? The events of 2016 seem like a distant daydream in hindsight. And maybe in 2022, 2019 will feel just the same. I guess it matters on a certain point of view.

It’s easy to focus on that bad. (And that’s not even considering the political aspect.) Buried my cat and two of my son’s fish. Worked under one of the worst supervisors I’ve had in all my working years. Witnessed the breaking of a fellowship. Lost some good coworkers and one of the best supervisors I’ve had at the library. And I learned that the one coworker who helped me survive and manage the 2018 Summer Reading Program would be leaving us before Summer 2020. A terrible Star Wars sequel.

And though bittersweet, I made my peace with my estranged father the night before he exhaled his conclusive breath.

But I shouldn’t ignore all the good. All the changes, some that I wanted to implement for years, that came into the children’s department. I spent the majority of my days reading. The memories made. Gaining a new supervisor whose visions will continue growing a department I’ve held so dear to my heart. Knowing that no matter who I lose in this job, that the teamship I helped cultivate will get us through. The smile spread across my sick father’s face when he realized who I when visiting him at the hospital. Gaining those few moments that I longed for so much in my adolescence. Knowing that he got to meet Shaun before he died.

And those hours spent talking to a person who makes me feel less like the monster and more like the person I aspire to be.

And as I stare into the mirror, seeing my disheveled hair glint more each day with the flecks of white growing in, I know that my time spent here isn’t for nothing. I don’t pretend to know what the future holds. Or if the next year will be better than this one. Or that the next decade will promise something spectacular.

I do know one thing, though…