(#5) feed the fire.

This is the end and the beginning. The new year is on our doorstep. I told you it was coming for me.

This felt good. It felt really really good. Whatever it is worth to you (or anyone else), today, with each word I type, I feel a bit stronger. I feel more myself. I feel capable and wide awake, so completely wide awake. Which brings me to my last reflection this year, the thing I most want to carry with me into the new year:

FEED THE FIRE.

Last weekend, on a rainy Sunday morning, J asked if I wanted to go to a museum. He said he needed something to fuel his creativity. So we drank our coffee and got on our bicycles and rode down to the Hirshhorn. There was an exhibit I didn’t like, and I’m still thinking about the strange film of black-painted spinning tops. But whatever I liked or whatever I hated, my mind was awake and alive and full of sparks. I was asking questions and being made to feel bored or uncomfortable.

The presence of someone in my life who says let’s go out and feed the creative fire has been transformative. Over and over again, experiences both simple and grand light me up, fill me with questions, stoke my urges to make something. But even when that ambitious person isn’t around to drag me out of my comfortable house into the wide world, I want to remember the good, the wild head-splitting good that comes from seeking out the experiences, the words, the sounds, the people who will feed the fire.

I’ve kept the fire going, somehow, though there are plenty of dark nights. The new year is coming for me. And I’ll meet it with this fire blazing.

(#4) this is a cycle.

Last spring, I found myself overwhelmed. My workload felt unmanageable, there was drama, both personal and professional, and on top of it all, J and I made the impulse decision to move (only a few blocks, but still).

I slipped, slowly but steadily. I found myself ordering pizza more nights than I care to admit. I started drinking Diet Coke during the workday, making me feel both amped up and able to work, but also anxious and like…...shit. I didn’t run. I watched TV when I got home at night. I felt like I wasn’t in control, or like I could only manage all of the chaos by abandoning all of the self-care that makes me feel good. And of course, mixed in with all of those feelings was pure guilt. Why couldn’t I manage the stress? Why couldn’t I whip myself into shape again?

But in a blur, the summer came. We moved into our new apartment. Work quieted down. I started riding my bike every day and training for a half marathon and eating salads at night. I stopped with the Diet Coke.

And this year, finally, through either age or experience, I learned that it’s ok.

This is a cycle.

All of it is a cycle. Life, hope, commitment, struggle, balance, peace, ALL OF IT. We can do our best, each of us, and that looks different for every person each day. And the drama of my spring is really inconsequential in the grander scheme. Greater struggles will come in my life, I know that they will. Greater loss, greater challenge, more juggling, more stress. But also more hope, more life, more experience.

I can do my best and no more. The weight of guilt won’t get me anywhere.

(#3) the idea in your head may not be the thing you need to create.

This summer, I sat up early one morning thinking about a comment someone made at work, the exact quotation which I’ve forgotten. What I do remember is that the comment either implied (or said outright) that people who live in poverty cannot afford to eat healthy foods. And I remember struggling to make sense of that belief, struggling to orient myself inside of that world. I didn’t believe that it was true, but what if I was wrong?

So many people think that poverty means that you don’t have enough money, but more than that, it means you don’t have a support system. You don’t have someone you can turn to when money gets tight, when you get laid off at work, when your partner gets sick or dies, when your car breaks down and there’s no one to watch your kids. It's about isolation. I’ve been very poor at times in my life, but I have never lacked that system of support, the family and friends who I know and trust without a doubt would take care of me if I needed them to. Which means that I approach poverty as someone who has not experienced it.

It has never sat well with me that the values I hold are only available to people with means, that a personal value like wanting to buy local or organic food can only be held if you have a certain socio-economic status. It doesn’t sit right with me, but it is basically true. But does poverty mean that it is pointless/hopeless/not possible to be concerned with nutrition? All of this to say that I struggled with it.

(#2) negativity is consuming.

I’m not usually the one to flaunt the nitty-gritty personal details of my life, especially not around here, but sometimes the details are needed to make a point. Last weekend, J and I had a fight about something very insignificant. Granted, if you know me, you can probably imagine that fighting with me isn’t an aggressive affair - more silence than shouting.

At any rate, we had just seen The Imitation Game, the late showing, after spending a strangely warm evening walking all the way downtown, and to the National Christmas Tree, and then to the theater. As we walked out, me misty-eyed (as I usually am after any movie ever), J began to offer his critique. He thought the movie was fine, but he had thoughts (as he usually does) about what could have been better.

After four years, I know this is just something that he does. He is a passionate, working artist and everything we see or experience is fuel for that. He doesn’t critique a film because he likes to wallow in maliciously deconstructing the work of others. He does it because that’s what artists do, especially artists like him.

I told you we had a silly fight, but I haven’t explained it yet. We left the theater, J started his critique, and I interrupted him with, Why do you have to be SO NEGATIVE all the time? He stopped talking.

(#1) it is time to find my voice.

For the last several weeks, I’ve been writing here somewhat stream-of-conscious. Not exactly so, but I’ve been writing fairly unedited, writing it and pushing the publish button all within the space of 15 or 20 minutes. In fact, I have almost always written that way in this space. My intention has not been to write on particular topics, or on a certain schedule, or to amass hundreds (or dozens) of readers. My goal has always been simply to make myself show up, to shake off my monkey brain, and to write hard.

Which is why the last five posts of this year will feel a bit strange to me - but I think they're right. 

The little ambition that I set at the beginning of this month (my invisible-to-you goal) was to top 50 posts here this year. The first two years of this space, I hit 49 posts. Last year I squeaked in at a dismal 29 posts. Considering that the challenge is not the time it takes to write (remember, 15 or 20 minutes), it was so disappointing to see that I could barely average two posts each month last year. 

This year has been slow as well. Not much more than one post each month. In September, with the fire and passion of setting birthday goals, I hung up a calendar reminding myself to write every day. I have not been writing every day, but I have diligently checked the boxes when I do write, down to this very day. So at the beginning of this month, I made it my goal to come roaring back into this space and to log more than 50 posts for 2014. It’s arbitrary, of course, but what isn’t? And really, it’s all a mental game. I wanted to prove that more than three years after I told myself, I KNOW I SHOULD DO IT, I was still doing it.

it's coming.

The end of the year feels so close, like a wild animal chasing at my heels, straining to catch my leg, waiting to swallow me whole. But it isn’t fear or dread that I feel at the coming year - I can’t quite place my finger on how it is that I feel. It’s as if, as much as I’m ready to take on the year, the year is ready to take on me. It’s coming for me. And I don’t know what yet that means or what it will bring.

Monday morning on another strange, part-vacation week. The skies are gray and while it’s light out, it’s a half-light that only makes you feel cold.

There is more more more to say, but the clock is ticking and I need to put on my shoes and brush my teeth and get on my bike and go to work. And there is always more to say, whether I can drum it up inside of me or whether it sits trapped, or waiting, or both.

some piece of gold.

How little can I write and call it a post?

That’s my thought while I’m eating my oatmeal and drinking my coffee and sitting on the couch with wet hair pressed against the back of my neck.

Followed closely by: Who cares?

Do you want to know what I was really thinking about this morning? We had a full-length mirror propped against a wall in our bedroom, and a few weeks ago I moved it and managed to crack it down the middle. So yesterday, we finally got around to picking up a new mirror, a cheap one from Target. It’s the sort of funhouse mirror that makes you look tall and thin. And this morning, while getting dressed, while fully aware of the illusion, I still felt a boost of confidence. I caught myself thinking, I look good.

Which got me to thinking about how my entire day is so often, so easily, shaped by what I see in the mirror in the morning. I know that I have the power to shape my world through my perspective. And it all lies within my own control.

By the way, I’m firmly holding to my belief that the more bullshit writing I wade through, the more I force myself to sit and just write whatever is in my head, the more I show up when I don’t want to, the more likely I will uncover some piece of gold. I’m not expecting a breakthrough or for it to suddenly become easy, but when I sift through it all, I might find something worth keeping.

And in the process, I build up my tolerance for discomfort, my ability to say to myself, Shut up with the excuses and just write.

perspective.

In the last day and a half I’ve been reading The Art of Possibility (and will finish it before the night is done). I had heard about it from several people, and randomly enough, one of the co-authors (Benjamin Zander) is the director of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, which I sold subscription packages for during the long, penniless spring I spent in Medford.

It’s a difficult book to put a finger on, to sum up, or even to explain how I feel about it. But I like it. They’re naming “practices” and concepts and versions of the self, and I’m a bit lost trying to keep track of what is what. Nonetheless, the mere act of reading the book is entering into my subconscious and making me feel a sense of hope. It’s opening my eyes to all of the ways that my own perspective shapes my experiences, my struggles, and overall, the world that I live in.

I woke up early this morning, while J slept in, and I drank the better part of a french press of coffee while I read this book in the armchair tucked behind the Christmas tree and under the window, while the sun came up. Then we set out early in the day and drove to Virginia to visit two Goodwill stores on the hunt for records. We hit the jackpot in Falls Church, coming home with Phil Collins, Merle Haggard, Carole King, and a John Denver album sleeve that actually contained The Who (and though I do like John Denver, The Who is better). And there was also The Firebird, which we saw live last month, and which I’ve been thinking of since, and which I’m listening to right now.

For lunch, we found a strange little Afghan restaurant tucked away in suburbia, mostly empty, with dingy white tablecloths and a very young server wearing a bow tie. It was perfect and delicious and we talked about the next week and the next year while we ate.

I nearly didn’t write tonight, nearly talked myself out of it, but I overcame that and a hundred other distractions. Not to write something magnificent, but to show up nonetheless.

a blink or a dream.

It’s Friday night at the end of a lazy week. I’m not usually clamoring to go out, but I almost have a touch of cabin fever. We had dinner reservations for tonight, but in a wave of money-guilt (and still feeling full from Christmas-all-day-cinnamon-rolls) I cancelled the reservation.

As two people who are together making just enough to get by in this city, we always face the weekend dilemma of having fun vs. not spending any money. What do people do for fun….for free? On an average weekend night, we’ll go back and forth, and finally end on a carton of ice cream from the nearby bodega and a movie at home. Or, like the true book-nerds we are, we’ll lay on the couch and read books.

I am always amazed by the way that a day facing a computer screen can just pass in a daze. I was the only one in the office today, and as I do most days, I stared at a computer and typed things. I spoke a handful of words all day to the cleaning assistant when she stopped by to empty garbage cans. The day felt like a blink or a dream. I hate days like that, days that pass by as if you haven’t lived them. 

But the good news is that the night has just begun, I have a drink in one hand and soon a book in the other, and soon J will get home and will (hopefully, but probably not) be full of good ideas of what we can do for fun tonight. And Aretha’s Gold is blasting on the speakers, which makes just about everything right.

in-between week.

I finished reading The War of Art yesterday, and it prompted a flood of questions and urges and ideas. The book itself is a little ridiculous, especially the third of three sections, which talks an awful lot about praying to the Muses and angels etc etc. But even still, it manages to issue a rallying cry to do your work and to fight the forms of resistance in your life.

I finished it yesterday morning, while listening to Jean Sibelius’ Finlandia, which I’m listening to again now.

And for the hour or so after, I thought about what the point of this writing here is. It’s part journal, part freewriting, part stream-of-consciousness, part soapbox. What is it? It’s my practice. It’s the place where I remind myself that I can show up day after day, or even hour after hour if my goals demand it. It’s the place where I dull my nerves and my fear of success and failure and being good and being bad.

It's that awkward time between Christmas and the year’s end, the time when I find myself reflecting and planning. The time when we feel prone to eating a lot of cheese and cookies (just me?) because the fresh start will come in the new year. The time when we feel prone to laying around and blowing through episode after episode of that one show we finally got hooked on. But it can also be that time when we take stock of the past year and lay the groundwork for the next. I think I will only set one resolution again for 2015, because it felt good to see just one thing through the year. It was a touchstone to remind myself what one of my priorities is (and by extension, what the rest are). I don’t know what that one resolution will be this year, but I have this in-between week to figure it out.

connecting.

I’m listening to records today while J is at work and the cookie dough is chilling in the refrigerator and the rosemary simple syrup is steeping on the stove. It feels at once trite (so hipster of me!) and honest.

I find meditation in the ways that work for me. One way is building rituals around art and creative acts. Another is doing things that connect my body to my head, because I’m the sort of person who finds those two things very easily separated. That’s also why I chose to get on my bike in the rain at 7:30am this morning to buy more coffee creamer and lemons and eggnog for the cinnamon rolls we’re having for breakfast tomorrow. So whether its the act of pedaling and feeling my sleeping leg muscles crank into life and feeling cold drops of rain on my ankles and the back of my neck or whether its the act of placing a wheel of vinyl on a turntable and watching the needle touch the groves and feeling the scratches and life in my own bones, these things connect me to myself and to the earth.

It’s gray and quiet today and I’m going to decorate some cookies and listen to more records and I’m going to finish that book that I said that I’d finish last night. This life is good.

a small part.

Do half-formed memories come back to you at strange times?

I was addressing a stack of envelopes today at work, in that comfortable dozy state that comes when you’re doing something simple and repetitive, and suddenly I was transported to a stretch of road north of where my parents live and where I lived for four years in high school. It’s a rolling stretch with fields on one side and a sub-division of new houses on the other. I rarely went into the side streets off that road, but it was the shortcut to the highway that I’d take back and forth to college, so I’d drive it then. And I remember one time stopping at a garage sale at a house on that street with my mom. I think I bought something, but I don't remember what.

At any rate, its strange to be instantly transported to a place that played a small part in my life. Suddenly I remember all these details, or maybe I create them, but either way the landscape seems so rich.

I really have nothing better to say today. It was a little warm and damp out, work was quiet and busy, and I’ve just washed a pile of spinach to throw into a frittata when J gets home from work. I’m listening to the All Songs Considered Holiday Special and wondering whether I have the stamina to read an entire book tonight, because I want to.

philosophical.

I just finished reading David Shield’s Reality Hunger and I don’t know exactly how I feel about it just yet, but I do know that it drummed up a real sense of fear and crisis in myself, not much related to the topics he takes in hand. For various reasons, it made me question my resolve, my ability to face myself, to stare into the abyss, and to write from that place. It made me doubt my own honesty with myself. It made me think about how I used to think about truth and how I don’t think about it much anymore.

All this while listening to a background of some cheesy mix called Santa’s Got Style (which I’m thoroughly enjoying, by the way).

I haven’t thought deeply about writing much this year. I’ve thought a lot about what I could write about and I’ve stared at blank pages and blank screens, but I used to ask a lot of philosophical (read: probably pointless) questions about the mechanics of it and the point of it and so on. I haven't done that much lately.

I also have been out of the kitchen for what feels like forever, but really more like a week. So tonight I dipped into one of Heidi’s cookbooks for a rye soda bread that went from bowl to out of the oven in an hour. Alongside that, I chopped an assortment of vegetables lurking in the refrigerator, including sunchokes, carrots, an onion, a leek, a handful of garlic cloves. They all went into a stockpot with butter and olive oil, followed by a few cups of veggie broth, a bay leaf, some thyme, and a scoop of yellow lentils. After it was all soft and cooked, I pureed half and we ate it as a chunky, earthy soup.

healing tea.

As is usual, I’m sitting facing the blank screen with what feels like a blank head.

This past week and my attempts to write twice each day haven’t felt exhausting, per se, but the interesting, cultural, thoughtful parts of my life feel a bit quiet lately. What else does one write about besides experience - things seen heard touched felt read watched listened to?

My body has a way of shutting down after a long week, and true to form, halfway through the day, the hint of a sore throat appeared. I’d already logged enough hours this week that I could come home a bit early. And I love being at home when the light is rising and falling. There’s something comforting in the sunrise and sunset from inside your home. I’m turning lights on one by one, lighting a few candles here and there. Long shadows are laying against the brick buildings that surround our apartment.

I could hustle up a to do list, clean out the refrigerator, scrub the (shamefully) dirty bathroom, do a load of laundry when our building is empty and the machine is free. But I’m not. Instead I’m simmering a pot of my cold-fighting tea and getting a book out, although I may just take a late afternoon nap. Here’s to the weekend and to rest.

whole.

Last night, feeling completely socially and otherwise burned out, I got home from an evening work event, ordered completely unnecessary Thai food, and sat on the couch for the next three hours watching TV (by TV, I mean watching a show on a laptop) (Jake has been trying to get me to watch this, which in theory I should like, but it’s still a little over the top for me).

When I sat down, I said I need to turn my brain off for the rest of the night.

Somehow I always think that when I’m exhausted, emotionally taxed, burned out with work, that the old American pastimes will make me feel better, i.e. eating and laying on the couch and watching TV. There is always that one second of relief, but like any mind or body numbing activity, it doesn’t actually make you feel better it just makes you not feel anything.

So of course, climbing into bed at midnight, I felt lazy and empty. I woke up this morning feeling the same. So I did the only thing I could do, which is tidy up the kitchen, throw away the takeout containers, make a pot of coffee, and write.

I’ve set some goals, or projects, for next week, for my at-home-holiday. Nothing incredibly taxing, but everything I am jazzed up about right now.

It’s Friday morning, which means the long week is closing, and I can give myself up to things like nature (encouraged by a mini-trip we’re taking tomorrow!) and words and creative thought. In the thick of it, even when I forget, I still know: those are the only things that make me whole.

go there.

The year when I was fourteen, I didn’t have any friends.

No, that isn’t how I meant to start. It just popped into my head when I started thinking, The year when….

We can’t write about things like that before work and before breakfast and even before coffee.

But let me ask you this: how do you feel about small talk? Isn’t it exhausting? Surely that can’t be the only first step to more meaningful conversation. I worked at an event last night and I made small talk about home states, about Minnesota, neighborhoods in DC, and dogs. It was fairly harmless, but it all has a way of making the world (and myself) feel very empty.

I have an idea for a podcast (it’s the thing to do these days, I think) where I talk to complete strangers and I start the conversation with: Tell me what you think about god. Followed by: Tell me about something hard in your life. Then perhaps followed by: Tell me what you think about art. Of course, I’m not much of a talker - but I’m a great listener. Think of the connection you would form with people if conversations always started that way.

I don’t run across people who go there very often, but when I do, I try to hold onto them. Maybe if I worked a bit harder to be that sort of person, we would all find each other?

different.

This year, for the first time in six years, I won’t be traveling at Christmas. J and I decided that budgets/work/schedules this year meant that we just couldn’t make the trek back to Minnesota and Wisconsin to be with family. As of this moment, we actually have no plans (none at all!) for Christmas day.

This city gets pretty quiet around the holidays/whenever those lawmakers are taking a break. In my head, I pictured a late breakfast (maybe cinnamon rolls?) and some lazing about and maybe a walk down to the Capitol with travel mugs of hot chocolate to see the tree.

It’s at once a huge relief and a bit of a bummer to not be traveling this year. Airports are not my favorite. I’ve had more than my share of cancelled or delayed flights because travelling to the Midwest in December always = lots of snow. But I’ll miss seeing our families, playing Scrabble and cribbage, seeing two wild little nephew boys open their presents, eating all of that good Midwestern food (and cheese cheese cheese!).

On a whim, I got us a big Christmas tree this year (taller than me!) so that our tiny apartment would feel full of holiday cheer. I baked cookies in a fury. I made vegan eggnog (which didn’t go as well as one might hope).

So this season feels a bit strange around here this year. I’m definitely listening to Christmas music non-stop at this point, and I plug in the Christmas lights every moment I’m at home, but it still feels a bit distant. Not in a bad way (or in a good way), just different this year. So here’s to a few new traditions, whatever they'll be, and to taking the holiday season easy.

five.

I have five minutes, and that isn’t too short a time to say something. It’s a sunny day, and from where I sit I can see heavy rays of light peeking over the next building, and Rat the Cat perched in the window watching the morning birds. I can see the odd assortment of books and papers that collect themselves on the table, on the shelves, on the floor, on the corner of the couch. I can see the wilted plants outside the window, on the fire escape, probably wishing I would just put them out of their misery (except the parsley and rosemary, which seem indifferent to the change in seasons).

It’s been a long week already and it will be longer still. Today will be long.

But there are wonderful things to look forward to - this weekend, next week, and months and months into the future.

And there's simple goodness: I slept well, I am safe and loved, and I’m drinking coffee with cream in it, so I feel special.

wallflower.

Today is a gloomy day, overcast with cold rain steadily falling. Someone wise pointed out that Christmas is next week. I have always felt at home on a gloomy day, not that I enjoy them per say, but I’m comfortable sitting still with a bit of gloom. I’m at ease being alone, tucked up in my home, quiet and brooding.

I wrote a letter last week, and it was only two pages long, but my hand cramped up toward the end - a vivid reminder that I haven’t been writing much of anything by hand lately. But I’m planning out my 2015-writing-challenge-for-one and it will mean getting back on track with my forlorn, empty notebook.

Can I tell you something about myself? I never want to go out. There’s always a part of me that wants to duck out of plans, that wants every evening and weekend to stretch on in comfortable silence (or relative quiet), where I can do whatever I want, even if it means just being in my own head.

I’ve been this way for as long as I can remember. I love lounging around with a few friends at home, but I’m never the one who wants to go to (or throw, god-forbid) a party.

This is something about myself that I haven’t made my peace with, not just yet. I’m trying to find the right line, the right balance, between stretching myself and letting myself be exactly who I am. (Another wise friend told me, Everyone gets to be exactly who they are.)

bike love.

In April of this year, I started riding my bike to work every day. I had bought a used bike months earlier and it sat, patiently chained to our front steps, waiting for me to work up the nerve to ride it in the city (see #21). I can’t remember what exactly gave me the push, but J did a practice ride with me one weekend, and the following Monday, I did it.

Like most things we’re afraid of (at least for me) the anticipation is far worse than actually living out the thing you feared. For the first few weeks, I had to swallow down the lumps of anxiety before heading out the door. I caught myself lying in bed at night, obsessing over how I would change lanes in that one tricky spot around the park or what would happen if I hit a pothole in the dark and wiped out. But in the moment, riding my bike every day, passing car after car stuck in traffic, is the most liberating and exciting part of my day.

This sums it all up.

In other notes, if you were ever a fan of the Dear Sugar columns, back before we even knew who was writing them, then GET THIS NOW NOW NOW. Cheryl Strayed and Steve Almond (the original Sugar!) are hosting a Dear Sugar Radio Hour. I listened to the first episode after work on Friday and it was the perfect start to the weekend.

But the weekend is over, and its Tuesday morning now, and the week marches on.

another day.

I have another post for today, one that I started on Friday and started on Saturday and started on Sunday. It felt so urgent all week and I just couldn’t get it done. Yesterday was wide open. My plans were to do some Christmas baking, pack up our Christmas gifts, and listen to lots of Christmas music (Alternating between this and this because I have no shame.)

I bought some soy coffee creamer over the weekend. Cream in the coffee feels like vacation to me, because I usually drink it black. All weekend I was pouring cream into my coffee and feeling special.

J and I biked down to Jimmy T’s for breakfast yesterday and managed to roll up just as a table by the window opened. We had huevos rancheros and an egg sandwich and mediocre coffee and super sweet grapefruit juice. We talked about the what next in work and life which is…….well, it’s unknown. It’s good. It’s scary. It’s wild. We tried to make quick business of running some errands after breakfast, which wound up meaning that we biked down to the organic grocery for the bulk nuts, then to CVS for the Drano and a gold Sharpie (an obvious need at this time of year), and then to the regular grocery store for lasagna noodles.

We finally got home and settled into work, J on some writing that needed to be finished, and me on baking all the things that I wanted to pack into boxes and mail away for Christmas. A few hours of lighthearted baking suddenly stretched into the night, and when I briefly thought that I had put too much coconut oil in the melted chocolate and it wasn’t going to harden, I nearly lost it. J needed quiet, so I was listening to my Christmas tunes in headphones. The Drano down the bathroom sink made the whole apartment smell like chemicals instead of sugary Christmas goodness. This isn’t the sort of day you find in the so-lovely internet world, where everything is polished and perfect.

here and there.

I’m starting in from the void (it feels). What did I see today? What did I hear? What did I think? It was all soft-focus and quiet, which I don’t mind at all….but then what do I write about?

I thought a lot today about what it means to surround yourself with things and people and experiences that support you, and what it means to build your life around joy.

I am planning a little writing challenge/retreat-for-one next year. I may or may not incorporate it into this space, I’m not sure yet, but I’m excited to start.

I have a project idea that is just brewing and brewing in my head. It would take a little money and a little time and I’m starting to ask myself, seriously, how I can make it happen.

I feel full, to the tip-top, but not with words. So a few here and there can be enough.

something different tonight.

I want to write about anything but writing. But really, I just want to write. Per usual, my thoughts feel scattered and elastic and just-out-of-reach and I keep finding a little thing here and a little thing there to do. Fold the laundry, make an omelet, hang a picture. I’m always so productive at the moment I tell myself to write.

What if I wrote about something different tonight? What if I wrote about how I used to believe in God and now I don’t? Even writing that sentence puts my stomach into knots. It is the biggest and most oppressive on my own list of things that are difficult to talk about. I don’t know who clicks their way through here these days and I don’t know who is reading. On this topic, there is bound to be some disagreement. I know very well, and deeply, that I've hurt some in the past. So I live in fear of hurting or offending anyone anywhere ever. I’d rather be the opposite, but fear can be a tricky thing to release.

I’m listening to the first Fleet Foxes album tonight, because it is certainly the time for it, and also I may have mildly overdone the Christmas tunes over the weekend. White Winter Hymnal always takes me back to the winter in my tiny bedroom in Wellfleet. It was adjacent to the dining room and must have been a pantry at some point because it barely fit a twin bed and a dresser and it had no heat. There was always sand on the floor, scattered over the blue green industrial carpet, because it was Cape Cod and the vacuum cleaners rarely were working in that house. There was always sand in the sheets as well, and each night I’d pull back the blanket and brush the sand out. In the winter, when it was very cold, I’d pile on my layers and crawl underneath a thick comforter and bury my head into the pillows. White Winter Hymnal takes me back there.

thinking on.

Well, November has come and gone.

I just looked back at my calendar to remind myself. What happened? How did all of those days fly by? How did I forget to come back here?

It happens, forever and ever, the waves crash and melt away, they rise with intensity, they fall back with peace.

Things I have been thinking about lately:
-money (savings, paying debts, making plans)
-possessions
-simplicity
-family
-the road
-the unknown
-the future

I always get the urge to write something when I see something that I wish I had written. Or I hear of someone making something that I wish I had made. Today it was this, one of my very favorite blogs, and her amazing announcement that she is writing a book on simplicity. I thought: How wonderful! And then: I wish I was writing that book.

I started reading this little book over Thanksgiving, which I happen to love, mostly because it speaks directly to me and my organizer brain. I’m not sure it would be the best read if you’re not already prone to or longing for tidiness. But it does have me fairly jazzed up about the idea of filling my life only with objects and possessions that bring joy. J and I are already minimal people, partly because we live in a small space, but I think we could do more to hold on to things that bring joy and let go of those that don’t.