A New Year - A New Perspective

The New Year brings an opportunity to start over, and I’m completely a fan of the idea. Sometimes it’s easy to get a little lost along the way, and it’s nice to refocus and regroup on our journeys.

2012 was a big year in a lot of ways. But it was also challenging on a personal level. We dealt with loss and grief. We dealt with medical problems and ER Visits. We dealt with a lot of crap, and part of me fears.

My fear is that it’s only the beginning of the challenges, that the New Year won’t bring anything more than sorrow.

This really hurts my heart to admit. But saying anything else is less than honest.

I hope the New Year brings hope. My deepest wish is that the New Year will bring healing.

2012 was challenging in the book world, too, which I sometimes think can feel like our only world. Being fully immersed in book culture the past year was an interesting experience.

Conversations on Twitter by people I admire opened my mind and my heart to new ideas. They challenged my beliefs and made me a better person for it.

I’ve thought about the romance genre in ways I never imagined. And at the end of it all, I figured out that telling the best possible stories I can is in my blood. Even when I think I’ve reached my limits. I might take breaks, but I won’t ever stop.

For me, 2013 will be about enjoying the journey. We’ve been showed the destination is never anything we imagined.

I can’t keep striving to reach the plateau where everything suddenly is okay. Because it won’t be. Life happens and gets in the way.

But I can enjoy the journey. We only get one.

What do you plan for 2013? Have you found yourself caught in a net of needing to achieve some impossible “thing”? If you have, maybe we can start a support group. :-)

My name is Kinley, and I will enjoy the journey. Because that impossible destination where everything is okay doesn’t exist. But maybe, something much better than what we planned does.

Happy New Year, all. Make it a good one! Let’s be positive, but still pay respect to the negatives. 

I’m entering this year a little disillusioned, definitely not as naive as 2012, but I’ve learned so much and gained so much strength.

I'm thankful the world didn't end in 2012. But I'm so ready for 2013 to heal the wreckage of a year that might not have ended, but it definitely left its wounds.

I hope you enjoyed the holidays! Let's read some books and get this New Year going.

Kinley Baker

@kinleybaker