A whole lot better than good enough

Actually, that could lead to confusion. To clarify - this post's title actually refers not to my blog title, but to the last sentence I wrote in my 2004 journal, this time last year. The full paragraph says:

"So where will I be this time next year? Hopefully in the South-West of England, since that's where we want to move to (there just aren't really any job prospects here for Barry if he ever wants to get back into design engineering, and what with the proximity to London sending house prices soaring and the poor quality of the houses you get for that money, it generally isn't a great place to live long-term). So, if things go the way we hope and want them to, we'll be spending next New Year's Eve in yet another new house, but this one will be ours. I'll have a new job, although since next New Year's Eve will be a Saturday I won't be working that day. And I'll be lucky if I have the time to write a similar bit of waffle for that New Year's Eve, because I'll be spending all my time chasing around after a mini chaos monster hell-bent on wrecking the place. And if that's where I am in my life by then, that'll be good enough for me. "

Check, check, check, check, and check.

Which I guess brings us to where I'll be next New Year's Eve. (In my life in general, that is. As far as where I'll be geographically - right here, I damn well hope. I haven't the least intention of moving again. Probably ever.)

Hmmm. You know what? Barring unforeseen disaster, I'll still be in this house, still be in this job, and still chasing a mini chaos monster, though hopefully one who's a bit more verbal and showing some faint glimmers of the approach of rationality. This has been a year of enormous changes - two new jobs, two new houses, one new blog, and one child developing from six-week-old bundle to thirteen-month-old toddler - and it has brought me to just where, literally and metaphorically, I want to be in my life.

Sure, there are things I'd like to have happen over the next year. By this time next year, I'd like to have a child who's learnt to a) talk, and b) sleep through the night. I'd like to get involved in some student teaching during the year. I'd like to get round to doing something for the proposed evidence-based-parenting website that somebody asked me to get involved with much earlier in the year and that then never came to anything as nobody else had any spare time either. And I'd like to meet Magpie and Evie.

But, on the whole - if I can sit here this time next year feeling as happy, as fulfilled, as satisfied with my life as I am now, it will have been a good and worthwhile year.