Here we are, already at the end of a year which feels as if it has hardly begun. Thank you all very much for your support and encouragement this year; I’m sorry I have not been as faithful a correspondent as I might have.

Here are twelve images from 2007: each one either carries particular significance for the month it was taken in or is simply a favorite of mine. Enjoy.

JANUARY

FEBRUARY

MARCH

APRIL

MAY

JUNE

JULY

AUGUST

SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER

NOVEMBER

DECEMBER

2007 has been a great, full, and character-building year for me; I wish the same for you and yours in 2008. Happy new year.

It seems that 2006 has come and gone before I could even call out its name and scream “Wait! Hang on a second!” The entire year I have felt like I was behind—behind in my school, in my writing, in my responsibilities, in my life. I was that kid pushing the merry-go-round who could never quite run fast enough to swing her legs up over the side.

Of course, maybe this is more a characteristic of my life than it is simply this year. Only time will tell.

A lot of “things” have happened this year. I started this blog. I fell in love with photography. I broke up with Elijah. My brother got married and my car got stolen (and recovered). I turned eighteen and started college. But those are only particulars. By looking at them you will only understand my whole year as well as the blind men could understand the whole elephant from feeling its trunk, its legs, and its tusks.

The real character of my 2006 can be found not in individual events, but in the intangible, overriding growth that has taken hold of my life and used every experience, good or bad, as an opportunity to say, “You’re not as great as you think you are. Now you must learn to deal.” And although much of me is screaming and pounding the ground with her fists while being dragged by her ankles toward “maturity,” another smaller, hopefully more important part of me wants more than anything to shed this childishness.

Here in my blog, I have mostly recorded the positive or silly things that have happened to me throughout the year. But 2006 had its share of bumps and bruises that never made their way into this little history book. Heartache, unhappiness, friends and family whose lives as they knew them are over—life packs a punch, a fact of which every day makes me more acutely aware. I suppose this is part of growing up.

I would love to tell you that this year’s events and all of its growth has left me with some kind of beautiful clarity about the nature of the universe and my minuscule place in it. But the truth is that in boarding the train to depart 2006, my bags are packed with much more confusion and many more questions than they were when I arrived. (I’ve heard that Gutenberg will do that to you.)

But my questions are good questions, I think, and the journey to finding good answers is a good one too. Also, I am blessed with a family, a community, a school, and friends who are fellow journeyers.

So long, 2006. You’ve been good, if not always fun. Here’s hoping that 2007 will be a year in which we can all come to terms with ourselves and this crazy world and build character through our experiences, good and bad.

(P.S. Thank you, especially, readers, for being here this year. I hope you have enjoyed reading; without your encouragement I never would have kept writing. You are greatly appreciated. )