(#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.