“I can’t get anyone to buy from me!”

“Did you ask anyone to buy from you? Did you offer them something to buy?”

“…No.”

I might chuckle about people missing these basics, except I know I’ve missed them, too. For example, I would always fall behind on my bookkeeping—like doing an entire year’s worth two weeks before the tax deadline—and I wondered why. The reason was incredibly simple: I wasn’t making any room on my schedule to do this work.

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It’s spring. Finally spring.

Living for many years in Atlanta taught me that even a mild, short winter can seem exhaustingly long. The camellias and pansies bloom all through January and the daffodils show up around Valentine’s Day each year, but the damp, cold days felt endless somehow. I was always just ticking off the days until spring—or at least, spring-like weather.

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A year ago, my parents and I went with my brother and his family to Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral to see a Space X rocket take off and explore the visitor complex.

The rocket launch was a dazzling display, and seeing the space shuttle Atlantis was really cool. However, it’s the Saturn V rocket that has stuck with me the most. I simply couldn’t believe how big it was. I could visualize it in my mind, but seeing it was something else. I was truly in awe. We humans designed and built these enormous rockets, more than fifty years ago, to send people to the moon? How audacious. How improbable.

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It’s the first day of a new year. Unblemished and unbroken like an overnight snowfall that no one’s had a chance to walk upon.

Inevitably, it will get messed up — the snow and the year. What then?

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People are trying to make sense of the passage of time.

Reflecting not only on the past year, they’re attempting to process the past decade, hoping to glean some lessons and understand the trends that shaped the events they’ve just lived through.

If you’re feeling a sense of loss, a fear of missing out, a worry that there’s a party going on without you, let me reassure you: Nobody knows what the heck they’re doing.

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