question 1.

I've never been one to just tear off a quick list of resolutions as we ring in the first of January. Oh, no. I like to have a plan, I like to carefully formulate my plan, and I like to contemplate excessively in order to do so.

After all, this is my life we're talking about here. It deserves excessive contemplation once a year, at least.

So I've developed my own little new year's tradition of spending my January － yes, the whole month － in introspection to help me choose what it is I want to focus on in the coming year [or the remaining eleven months, anyway]. Typically, I do quite a bit of journaling, beginning with reflections upon the past year. This year, I'm going to do my journaling here, question by question, hoping some of it might resonate with some of you － maybe move you to do a little soul-searching of your own and/or share your answers/revelations with the rest of us here.

And so I begin with some prompts from "Reflection Questions for 2009" at the Simple Mom blog:

What was the single best thing that happened for you this past year? the single most challenging thing?

Interestingly, I find the single best thing and the single most challenging thing from 2009 are intertwined for me. The single best thing was the inauguration of Barack Obama as the President of the United States. I don't want to gush too much within this arena, but I'm an Obama Mama through and through, and this historic event was not only a political game-changer but also a life-changer for me and, I hope, for this amazing country of ours.

The single most challenging thing for me was a mid-year debacle with my parents － my mom, especially － which we're still wrestling to recover from. L - o - n - g story short: It began with my parents sort of attacking me because they felt I wasn't engaging enough with them, and has come down to an agreement not to talk politics [my dad watches FOX news 24/7 and my mom is the president of her local Republican women's club] － an agreement my mom particularly is having trouble upholding. She just can't seem to embrace the whole "agree to disagree" thing, so it's a struggle. The sad irony is, the whole thing was ignited by them feeling too distanced from me, yet every single time she soapboxes about Obama's Socialist Administration, it puts a little more distance between us. *sigh.*

And you? Best and most challenging happenings of 2009? Do share.