December 2024: Seasons of Life

This is my 112^th reflection: 

52 Weekly Reflections in 2019 followed by

60 Monthly reflections since January 2020. 

To put it into perspective, I started writing these when Charlie was born.  Now she’s one of my most loyal readers.   

While this hobby has taken up a lot of time and energy, I’m so glad I chose to pursue it for a few reasons.

As I look through the pictures of this post, it’s a reminder of how fast time flies. These reflections have been a way for me to capture so many special memories through the fleeting seasons of life.

The reflections introduced our kids to the world and shared our journey through parenthood. 

They’ve featured our most memorable weddings, events, and vacations.

They’ve documented really important lessons from some really important people in my life.    

They kept record of our experience throughout the entire COVID quarantine.

They’ve highlighted the top moments and milestones from each life stage and transition. 

Secondly, the actual practice of producing this blog has also provided so many benefits along the way:

The self-imposed accountabiliy to publish a reflection each month has led me to take more pictures, pay more attention, and proactively look for the significance, the lesson, and the story in each experience.  

The consistent writing process has given me a way to better clarify my jumbled thoughts– often realizing that the ideas bouncing around in my head are quite incomplete and messy until they reached the final draft.

The act of clicking “Post” each time has made me more comfortable with sharing my perspective and stories publicly, which has sparked more powerful and interesting conversations with others.

And the routine of reflecting on my experiences as a new husband, new dad, new advisor, and new homeowner has helped me become better at each of those things (with plenty of room for improvement ahead of me). Because as John Dewey famously said, “We don’t learn from our experience. We learn from reflecting on our experience.”

Finally, I hope building this collection of published reflections can continue to be a special thing for my family.

I hope my kids read these posts one day to better understand their early years and get a sense of their parents’ evolving perspectives. 

I hope it can be a way to pass down important lessons that I’ve learned when they’re ready for those lessons. 

I hope it can be a way to remember vacations, Holidays, and little moments that might otherwise escape their young memories. 

The Janiec Reflection started as a New Year’s Resolution heading into 2019, and after writing more than 100 posts, I’m looking forward to writing 100 more.

But finding the time to write these posts now with 3 kids and a busy life has become more challenging than it was with 1 baby during a quarantine. 

So in order to put in the full effort this exercise deserves for many years to come, I’m going to need to shift to a more reasonable frequency. 

Going forward in 2025, I’m going to keep capturing and sharing these experiences, lessons, and stories in a new Quarterly Reflection series called “Seasons of Life.”

This will hopefully enhance the quality of each post and allow me to take a deep breath in between each one.

I will publish the “Seasons of Life” reflections in March, June, September, and December year after year until I reach my next 112 posts (which could eventually start featuring my future grandchildren at some point).

Thank you so much for keeping up with the reflections through the years. It’s been such a fulfilling exercise and one heck of a journey since I started this thing, and it means a lot that you read them.

Can’t wait to capture whatever awaits us in this next season of life.

***PS: Please subscribe to get these quarterly “Seasons of Life” reflections directly to your inbox. ***