The first day of the year feels haphazardly positioned. It doesn’t mark a seasonal change; the solstice has already passed which would naturally be a moment of new beginnings. In the 16th century, the Julian Calendar was exchanged for the Gregorian calendar and January 1 became the first day of a new year.

The names of the months remained mostly the same in the transition. January is a nod to the two-faced Roman god Janus who looked back into the past and forward into the future. While not astronomically notable, it is ideologically fitting to flip the page to a new year in the month honoring reflection and vision.

The past year was a bit of an anomaly. Keeping a quiet life and avoiding breathing anyone else’s air is not how most people want to exist. Gearing down to the bare minimum and staring at your own four walls felt inhumane in some instances. And, yet there are lessons to glean.

If all the ticking seconds of the past year are like grains of sand, then truly it is a beach stroll to collect like truths. What will I take with me in the year to come? What changes are worth holding onto when life cranks back to its distracting pace?

Here are my keepsakes from the last year:

I am not the sum of other people’s determinations: Turning 40 this year was a supercharged time of reflection. Pair that with sending my youngest off to kindergarten in the fall and it had all the makings of a crisis of identity. In the end I learned I get to determine who I am and I have more power in the matter than I had previously thought, in fact, I can be whoever the hell the I want to be. To top it off, I trust my compass and I don’t need generic mass approval.

Strength takes on different shapes: I began lifting weights and I decided to start the formidable task of reinventing myself as a writer. While these two things seem dissimilar, I am discovering they both require patience and longevity. Neither can be mastered in a day, a week, or a month. Committing to something that cannot be buttoned up quickly stretches me and it is both uncomfortable and valuable work.

The whole of Christendom does not speak for me: I have a deep abiding faith in Jesus, but American Christianity, as an institution, has revealed its priorities. It is in essence a lobbying group for white masculinity. My condemnation comes as the church rallied around a smarmy huckster, followed by the abject moral failure in upholding a system of white privilege. I am as disturbed by my own complicit silence and have begun the humbling work of acknowledging my ignorance and failure to act.

I should not have to do so much around the house: I have altogether quit sorting the kids’ laundry, either clean or dirty, and they are each responsible to make sure a specific common space in the house is tidy on a regular basis. I don’t have to be a slave to housekeeping. I am, after all, one of six people living here.

It’s okay to be entertained and amused: For a wretchedly long time, I lived a stoic, austere existence devoid of pleasure beyond demanding privacy in the bathroom. There had not been room for such things in the crises of the past. At the beginning of the year I started reading a romantic book series with an accompanying television series. It felt so damn wonderful to be entertained.

There are certainly more things rumbling around in my brain, ideas still in their infancy and other wisdom still to be uncovered, but I hope you get a chance to inventory your own year. May you embrace all that January is: taking stock and setting a vision.