I really thought 2015 was going to be my year. Truly. Genuinely. I really believed 2015 would be the culmination of all that I’ve learned so far about finding balance between enjoying the good parts of life and enduring the not so great parts as well. To be fair, 2015 was actually an excellent year for me, M, our mastiff, and the sweet new puppy we adopted over the summer: we started new jobs, we started in a new town, and we finally started making time for fun again.

It was with enthusiasm for all these new beginnings that I started this blog early last year. Life was so busy, though, and then so awesome that I barely paid any attention to my page at all. I’d jot ideas down, but then get distracted by hanging out with friends or catching up on sleep. I didn’t post again until two of our best friends made the move back to Italy, a change that left a big gap in a previously active social life. And then there was The Purchase.

Any hopes I had for additional posts last fall flew out the window when we decided to spend finance a purchase for a ridiculous amount of money–money that we obviously didn’t have in hand given that we signed on for several years to pay off The Purchase. First I felt panic–what had we done!? and in the same year we bought a house!?–but that quickly turned to disgust. How could I claim to be living the good life on a budget when I’d clearly spent way beyond my means to buy something that wasn’t actually adding to my day-to-day happiness?  I lost faith in myself and my priorities, and I shamefully let my blog fall by the wayside.

But after some time to really process it, I’ve made my peace with what’s been done. If given the chance to go back in time, I’d probably find some way to avoid spending so much in 2015, but I don’t think I could have come into 2016 so strong in my belief that money can’t buy happiness without any hiccups. And now that there are four months of distance between me and my big mistake, I can see that by sharing a little bit about what makes my days wonderful, maybe I can help someone else make the mistake of confusing the power to buy with the power to find happiness. If anything, at least writing about all the ways we find happiness will remind me not to confuse the two or make the same mistakes this year!