Once you graduate from law school and pass the bar exam, you pledge to spend the rest of your natural born days focused on “the record”.

We talk of making a record, protecting the record, and preserving the record for appeal.  We speak to the record, muddy the record, and enter evidence into the record.  The record takes on the sacredness of the Holy Grail.

So.  For the Record:

Contrary to implications, I have NOT gone a year without complaining, nor have I actually stopped kvetching, whining, belly-aching, bitching, and what-have-you.  Had I achieved my goal of matriculating 365 days without voicing one iota of complaint, this blog would have shuddered to a merciful close.  Don’t give me more credit than I deserve.  (You know who you are.)

I’ve learned to identify complaint, both verbal and nonverbal.  I’ve beaten my own articulation of complaint back to a dull roar.  I see past pettiness considerably more than before I started this blog and its underlying mission.  But I have a long way to go, which explains its extension.

Lucille Johanna Lyons Corley told me a long time ago (well, she’s been dead for 33 years, so a REALLY long time ago) that where there is life, there is room for improvement.  I’m still alive.  I’m still improving.  And I’m still putting my best foot forward — as Johanna Ulz Lyons counseled — in furtherance of my #journeytojoy.

It’s the first day of the fifty-sixth month of My Year Without Complaining — or, shall I say, My “attempt to make it an entire ” Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.