The end of the year is in sight. I have submitted my poster application for a conference in June, data collection is concluded for the year, and my kids’ teachers have received their holiday cookies. We are going tomorrow to visit our families in Israel, and 2012 is pretty close to being done in this house. So I’m going to take the rest of the time – after I’m done with this post – and just relax (and make preparations for the trip, obviously. We haven’t started packing yet).

I was going to write a post about what happened last week, but I just don’t want to. I have refused to wallow in the news and to even watch any coverage at all. I read the blogs, but that’s about it. I will try and write a blog post about events like these in the New Year, but right now I just don’t feel like dealing with this. I know I am incredibly lucky to not have to – my kids are too young to understand any of it anyway, and we were not affected by this tragedy. Although my heart goes out to the families that were affected, I’m going to slack off towards the end of the year and postpone doing this very hard post to the New Year.

Which brings me to my other topic: New Year Resolutions. I don’t know that I have any, other than to keep my kids healthy and fed (which is all I’m willing to commit to, given the workload I’ll have next year). We have a big year coming up: we will have to make some tough decisions about where we are going to go from here. In 2013, I will have to start looking into the next phase of my career: either a post-doc or a job outside of academia (or a job in academia, but that’s not very likely). If my son starts Junior Kindergarten, this is the year he will do it (we still haven’t decided if it’s worthwhile to transfer him next year or to wait another year). My daughter is starting the toddlers program in January, and by the end of next year she will be a preschooler (how did this happen so fast??)

I hope that by the end of next year we will still be worried about these kinds of problems: do we transfer to JK or not? Do we potty train and when? Do I stay in academia or try to find an alternative course? I hope we will not be worried about other kinds of problems that make these problems look insignificant. I hope that next year we are still able to live our insignificant and non-eventful lives. And I hope you would too.

Happy Holidays, and see you in the New Year! :)