This year’s collage looks a bit like the universe shuffled my favorite play-list—travel, mountains, horses, pastries, auroras, bikes, and one very opinionated dog. I didn’t realize how lucky I’ve been until I started scrolling back through all the pics this year and thought, “Huh…this actually was a pretty good year”—even if my hair still hasn’t recovered from the Icelandic wind and my quads remain unimpressed with my cycling ambitions, despite my delusion that I am, in fact, a good cyclist. Or at least a determined one.

I crossed a couple countries off my bucket list, wandering through landscapes so dramatic they made me question whether I’d accidentally stepped into a screensaver. The horses looked at me the way most locals do when tourists show up with too much excitement and not enough layers—but still, I felt oddly at home. There’s something about standing in a wide, open place that makes life feel both enormous and also quite simple.

Back home, my loyal Ibis—part philosopher, part misanthrope— decided to stick around for another year of judging my life choices. Her expression says it all. She’s aging with the combination of grace, joy and stubbornness that I aspire to.

There are the small joys: perfect weekly latte runs, a little cool kid of the year award for being awesome at work, mountains wrapped in mist, and the aurora lighting up the sky in my own backyard like it forgot it was supposed to stay near the poles. Moments of quiet awe and peace that stitched the year together. Yet joy wouldn’t be without grief. Withdrawing from things and people that held shape in my life, not from anger, but self-respect, love and quiet hope. Maintaining a contented courage in letting go with an open hand and heart, trusting the cosmos returns whatever or whoever was meant to move in my orbit.

I’m learning—slowly, stubbornly—that life only blooms in this moment in front of me. Not in the replays or sparkly future where I may finally have my act together. All too often I catch the universe clearing its throat, reminding me I have to look up and life is happening now, when I’m too distracted to notice the quiet magic humming around me. As much as I’d like to admire every falling leaf like it’s high art, I also don’t want to miss the wonder happening outside my own head. My inner world is charming, but it’s not where life lives. Maybe that’s the balance: standing between now and eternity, awake enough to savor the lovely experience of being a human soul doing its best on this spinning blue rock.

So here I am— windblown, caffeinated, a little tired, a little tougher, a little pissed off at the corporatization and destruction of democracy, but I have to believe karma keeps her receipts. Even in uncertainty I ask you to show up with kindness in conflict, always. It’s the one thing that never loses its power, and we need to remain hopeful for whatever comes next. In the immortal words of Hamilton, I encourage you all to “rise up.”

So many of us have weathered our own mix of growth spurts and plot twists this year. I’ve been fortunate to be held by my tribe in ways that still catch me off guard and grateful for every one of you who walks or rides beside me, nudges me forward, or just hands me a latte when I need it most. Turns out, pretty good years look a lot like this. And new years are the promise of new beginnings. Hugs!