I packed a minimalist-style suitcase, and I'm staying this week (9 days) in North Carolina with Allison and Will and Annie. It's been so beautiful and sunny here while it is snowing at home, and I'm feeling so happy and healthy and lucky. Their house is literally in a forest and the air smells like mountain air when you open the front door.

Last January, I swore I would not spend another January living in Utah, and this is the best compromise I could make. And actually, that's fine because life is just busy.

What I'm trying to soak in, this week, is a lesson in moderation. Allison and Will don't drink brewed coffee, while I normally have 4 - 6 cups per day, and taking a break has been really good for me. I think? I sort of replaced the coffee with about 4 cups of black tea per day.   Because that's what you do when you're an obsessive, neurotic person, in recovery.

Allison has been taking me to her boot camp work outs, and so I'm also perpetually sore. Everything about this just feels like a great way to spend the beginning of the year; working hard, in community, and trying to fast from parts of my regular routine.

Now if there is just a way I can keep doing something like this, every January, I think I can manage to keep living in Utah.

I will look back at this winter and remember it as driving around slowly, in the snowy dark, listening to Malcolm Gladwell read me his books.

And it's beautiful. All of it. I stood in Sprouts the other day with an armful of veggies, and thought, "I can't believe that I'm lucky enough to get up and do this all over again tomorrow." And that is something I've been waiting 20 years to feel again. Dependent on nothing but God's mercy.