I always get excited as one year’s days grow fewer and the next year nears. Reflecting on accomplishments, recalling happy memories, and thinking about ways I have grown or changed stirs feelings of motivation in me for the coming year. While I could technically think about those things on any given day, there is something about doing it around the new year that feels special. Knowing that during the next holiday season we will be celebrating a “Corona Christmas” made the end of 2013 exciting and, simultaneously, a little bittersweet. Don’t get me wrong, imagining that by New Year’s Eve, we hope to be in La Paz, Mexico makes me giddy. At the same time, there is always comfort in the familiar.

Prefunking at Mark and Helen’s…in front of their urban fireplace.

Chasing our dream of setting forth on this voyage is exhilarating. It also requires a great deal of sacrifice, something that may or may not always be apparent to those around us. Most of the days we have visitors are the magical sunny ones, not the ones where the engine is torn apart or we’re busying ourselves with bright work. To set out on a big voyage is also a daring move early in our careers, and we will be separated by continents, rather than cities or states, from our nearest and dearest. Our every spare penny gets tucked away into our sailing kitty, and we constantly look for ways to trim our already tight budget. We continue to whittle away at our belongings, and we find ourselves feeling sad and sentimental (especially me) when trying to let an item go, only to feel contented when it’s been given away, realizing we’ve passed along something that someone else surely needed more.

We are each comforted by our shared commitment to this goal and by the passion we each feel in chasing after it. Nonetheless, I suppose that tinge of longing for the boat not to be rocked when the winds of change are brewing is to be expected, just as the surge of excitement is a certainty as the wind begins to fill our sails.

Although my “resolutions” are far more akin to goals, I like to make them. Among my goals for 2014: let go of enough of our belongings that we can set sail without a storage unit, get scuba certified, and reel in a tuna.

Celebrating the new year with Arjay, Elena, Mark, and Helen!