this new year.

One of the things I have come to love about this blog is the way that I can look back over the months and see slices of myself. I can remember whatever quirky thought or emotion had me so captivated that I wrote it down. The more freely and openly I write here, the more impulsive my fingers fly, the more honestly I am able to see myself.

I don’t write because I am terribly terribly afraid of being bad at it. I don’t write because I have other things to do that are not as hard. I don’t write because I know I should. I don’t write because I am undisciplined. 

I’ve made some resolutions for this new year. I wrote them all out in a hippy-dippy mindmap. But it actually worked for me. I have felt, especially lately, overwhelmed with things I want to do and what seems like not enough time to do them. Drawing it all out onto one page helped me to remember my priorities and remember how to make time for them.

Today is January 4. We are four days into a new year. This is the year I will run a half-marathon and pay off my car loan and who-knows-what-else. Really, who knows what else?

I notice, the more I read what I write, the stuffiness in my voice. Or seriousness? Or ennui? Whatever it is, it isn’t quite accurate. I am a private person and I tend to write carefully in a way that is acceptable for strangers to read, in the way I might present myself, in life, to a stranger. Generally the stranger will find me quiet and shy and they won’t really be sure if I quite like them. The people who know me well know my ridiculousness. I suspect that the more I write, the more I work my way up to the reveal. The moment I can write just as I am.

People are telling me to write. They are telling me to write and I am deliberately ignoring them.

I want to tell you my two writing resolutions:

1. Freewrite 10 minutes each day.
2. Write on the blog 3 times/week.

Those tasks seem very large, although really they aren’t. But oh they loom. I actually rather want to back up now and delete both, which tells me I am afraid, which tells me I must go on. So there they stand. It comes and goes, ebbs and flows, rushing with the tide.

There is one particular thing I am allowing to nudge me on. In a tiny epiphany, I realized: if I just shut up and write then I can release the guilt of not writing. You wouldn’t believe how I carry that guilt around, always always with me. Literally, in the form of a notebook in my bag, pages dingy and blank. So if I just do it do it do it, at least there’s that. I can stop feeling guilty, I can be either good or bad, I can be doing, because the point of all this is the doing.

Tonight is a good night. I am sitting quietly at home and thinking. Those are things I love to do. Some feelings have a way of creeping in and draping themselves about you in January. Those feelings of homesickness for family and friends, coldness in the feet, uncertainty about what the future holds. But there is this place and this task and this choice to live it out.