another one.

I turned 27 this past weekend. Some while ago, I picked up the habit of setting resolutions on my birthday, one for each year. A bit cheesy, perhaps, but I like it. I like to think about what I will do with my next year of living. 

The wonderful thing about this blog, which has been kicking around for more than a year now, is that I have a record of what I resolved to do last year. I like a list that mixes tangible resolutions with broader goals for living. And I like a list that mixes very small tasks with very large ones. It makes it less easy to measure when some have been done, but I think I've written here before about my philosophy on goals and resolutions. I love them for their way of making me consider my priorities and strive towards new things. I don't mind if they're not all checked off in a row. I just think it's lovely to think about all the things I could do, all the things I have done, and all things I still want to do. But anyway, I ramble on.

from September 22, 2011
1-knit a sweater
2-make cheese
3-go camping
4-conquer the F-chord on my guitar
5-run a 5K
6-be more honest
7-love
8-start cooking dried beans
9-make one new friend
10-write more letters
11-drink more loose leaf tea
12-open up to people
13-read one new author from the list of nobel laureates
14-visit Canada
15-start making my own bread again
16-less dairy
17-buy clothes with color
18-write often
19-tell jokes
20-make pizza in my cast iron skillet
21-apologize less
22-sew curtains
23-ride my bike in the city
24-bake a layer cake
25-paint the big canvas
26-yoga

just here.

Something I love about the essay is the way that it can wind through a million different seemingly unrelated topics, then you get to the end and there's a click in your head and it all connects into one big picture. I love that. I think it's very relevant to way we live our lives. I think it's an important way to stir up observation, which is critical to empathy, which is critical to creating the world we want to live in. But sometimes I try hard to contrive it. I try to jam the thread through the needle and the organic unfolding is lost. In fact, sometimes it paralyzes me. I lose sight of the fact that I can write about just one thing and that can be enough.

So let me tell you something about myself: I have a never-ending need for control. This causes some good things in my life: I don't miss deadlines, I pay my bills on time, I never lose my keys or my wallet. It also causes some bad things: I forget how to relax, I demand that others meet my standards and do things my way, I feel stress over things that shouldn't really matter. I have been thinking about it a lot lately. My control tendencies fire up when my life feels most overwhelming, when there are lots of changes, when I am sometimes at the mercy of others' decisions or actions. The fact is that I've been been grabbing for control left and right lately, and my controlling tendencies have gotten....out of control.

Please tell me that made you chuckle.

I'm always swimming in resolutions, too many, which is a surefire way to fail at every one of them. But I believe this one is worth some effort, because I think my hunger for control is at the root of other things I may wish to change in my life. I often take myself too seriously and lose sight of the things that matter most. This isn't confession-time, or I don't mean it to be. This is just the thing on my mind, and it's just one thing, and it's about life, and I'm writing about it.

yes, me too.

"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one." - C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

I was thinking about that quotation today, but in my memory, it was about reading. Funny how another person's words take on their own life in our own heads. But anyway, I suppose the reader and the writer are friends of a sort, so it still holds true.

I remember several moments. They are the basis of that enduring love of an author that you cling to for life.

It was there when I first read Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones and understood that the monkey in my head that kept me from writing really meant that I should be writing. It was the moment I realized that real writers do the same battle in their own heads.

It was there when I first read Wendell Berry's Jayber Crow, when Jayber was content to pack up all his belongings in one box and start walking, when he was content to sit in the back of an empty church to hear the silence, and when he was kept up all night to contemplate the darkness of the world. Well, I loved him for it.

And I'll never forget Annie Dillard's desire in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek to sit still for hours on end to watch the insects or animals around her. I called it my sitting-quietly-time and she was doing it too.

happy birthday and so on.

Three years ago, in the fall, I bought a quilted vest at the Goodwill in Hyannis. It’s faded blue and the shoulders are too big. If I remember right, I paid $5 for it. One of the seams busted open after I bought it, but I sewed it back together. It isn’t flattering and honestly, I don’t think it’s even hipster cool. It’s just a big old vest that I bought at Goodwill and that I love dearly.

I was looking out the window on the bus yesterday morning and saw a man driving what must have been an expensive car. He looked like he felt powerful and attractive and happy with himself. It set me to thinking about the material possessions we derive happiness or pride from. I was actually thinking of it as an equation.

My happiness from ugly too-big vest = his happiness from expensive car.

Or is my happiness > his happiness?

That’s what I was wondering.

Last weekend I saw Searching for Sugar Man at a sweet little independent theater in the West End of DC. I won’t tell you the whole story, but I will say go see it. Especially if you’re wondering about being an artist in the world, or if you’re wondering about finding contentment and living with integrity. It’s a mind-blowing story and told beautifully.

After a dark storm blew threw on Saturday night last weekend, the air turned cool here. It just turned with one snap. I went for a run on Sunday and felt chilly. When fall is ushered in, each year, my body sheds a layer. That doesn’t seem right - I suppose most layers are shed in the spring? But this season turns and my soul feels clean. I can’t overstate it and I’m not being dramatic. I am reborn in the clean rush of autumn.

sharing.

Last weekend, I started moving things into our new apartment. We won't be in it full-time for a few more weeks, so I can take my time shuttling over loads and slowly unpacking boxes. This has a been a strange summer of living half-packed up and ready to go. Some of my things have been packed up since May.

As I was unpacking a box of books yesterday, I found a folder filled with recipes that my grandmother had saved for me. She gave me the folder last Christmas, some recipes cut out of magazines, some hand-written on note cards.

It seems I come from a long line of sharers. We are always clipping articles or writing down quotations or forwarding blog posts to the people we care about. For whatever reason, it feels like the greatest expression of love to me. It is one thing to casually think of the people you care about, but another to think about what might interest or intrigue them. Sharing those clippings or recipes or what-have-you's is my way of saying that I'm always thinking of you. No matter what I'm watching or reading, I'm thinking of you and wondering if you'd like it too.

My grandma did this for me. My father is always scanning in newspaper clippings and emailing them to me. And I do it for others. Poor, poor Jacob undoubtedly has thousands of archived (or deleted) emails from me linking to news articles and blog posts. My dearest friends get emails from me with recipes that I wish we could make together. And I have a thick file of hand-clipped recipes from my grandma.

My grandma passed away unexpectedly this summer, after I had already packed the recipes up in a box of books. I had forgotten about them until they were uncovered last weekend.

restless.

I wrote something to post here last week. It was long and rambly and personal and I just couldn't manage to post it. It sat in a draft all week and I tweaked a word every now and then. I thought that maybe it wasn't good. (But who am I kidding? I always think it isn't good.) I thought that it was too personal or revealed something a little too honest about me. And then today, I realized it isn't any of that. It's just that I've lost the nerve I had built up. You have to be nervy to write something down, wiggle yourself out of it, pop it off your head like a too-tight sweater, and then put into the world before other eyes and minds. You really have to be brave. Creating art is both the most liberating and terrifying thing I know.

Well it feels mighty stale to me now because it's been sitting in my computer/brain for many days. But sometimes the point of my being here, at this rinky-dink blog, is not to write beautifully or perfectly or even well. Sometimes it is just to steel my nerves and toughen up my weak heart.

My thoughts lately have been on the artist's life. I have been feeling old lately (and getting older still). But the drumbeat in my ears grows louder and it is this: if you're going to do it, then do it.

There is nothing I want more. There is nothing that scares me more. There is nothing else for it but to do it. How many times must I say it before it sticks in my own ears? I'm not sure. But I'll keep saying it until it does.