Sometimes our hearts ache from all the triggers in the world. We feel inundated by bad news and impossible challenges. Our bravery wavers, tiredness overwhelms us, and the bad-ass nature of our personalities — that part of us willing to fight — needs time to rest and recover. We need a respite, a brief rest from challenges.

Something about the transition from one year to the next inspires us to want to improve ourselves. Want to start 2019 with a New Year’s resolution? What if we make it easy? It seems there are 24 character strengths and every one of us already possesses all 24 – just in different proportions. How about starting the New Year acknowledging the strengths that already make you uniquely YOU?

Professional line sitters make up to $35 an hour — and I’m not talking about birds! I’m referring to a whole new category of service people who are willing to wait in long lines for you while you use your time to do other things. Engage a line sitter and you don’t need to spend hours waiting in line to score last minute deals on Christmas gifts or tickets to shows for the holidays.

We all think about change; it's the nature of existence. Even this moment is transient. We can only be present in the split second it exists. There’s no possibility of anchoring or replicating “now,” yet we still long for the comfort of predictability. Authors and philosophers contemplate change. Here are some of their perspectives, plus my own musings about embracing what is forever elusive.