this tight knot.

All I want is to write something that says it all. One perfect sentence that describes the strange and winding emotions in my brain or heart or stomach (or wherever they live) that exist right now, in this moment. I want you to see me sitting here on my couch next to my sleeping cat, wearing my work dress covered by an enormous flannel shirt. I’m not wearing shoes. I’m drinking red wine. I’m listening to the wind (the crazy wind!) blow in gusts, over and over.

I can’t settle, can’t find the mark. Like always, I go too long without writing and this tight knot forms inside of me. How to loosen it? It’s slow work.

I ran 6 miles last weekend in a cold rain. I ran to Lake Michigan and back home again. When I got back, I took a shower, put on four layers of clothes, and then climbed into bed and put my head under the covers.

I’ve been having vivid dreams lately, the kind where you wake up and turn the images of the dream over and over in your head. It’s unusual for me. A few weeks ago, I dreamt I was in Washington DC when the cherry blossoms were blooming. In my dream, I was driving along a stretch of road, looking at the blooms, and crying at how beautiful it was and how much I missed it.

Strange, right? I never felt like I belonged in DC or like it was my place, but I have been caught off guard again and again over the past year at how much I miss it. Now it will join my catalog of places I used to be, which is quite a volume. I don’t belong to any of the places, but they live on in me. I think C.S. Lewis wrote something to this effect, something about how we don’t live life as if we’re passing through train stations. Something of each place, each person, and each experience becomes a part of us.

in the new year.

We’re already in it. We ended the year at home, eating this and watching this. We started the new year at the theater (obviously), followed by an endless stream of food at my parents' house. I meant to write yesterday and the day before (and the day before, etc.). I was planning to write a lot to round up the year. I wanted to bring home some big ideas, but it just didn’t happen. I guess I could waste time regretting it, but it seems better to sit here in the bright cold sunshine on my couch and think about this new year with hope, ambition, and mindfulness.

My philosophy on resolutions has never been about perfection, but more about focus. Priorities change through our lives and I value the chance to reassess what I am working on or towards.

Over the last two years, I resolved to read more. I aimed for 24 books each year, but fell a bit shy of the goal. But I still feel good about that focus - it was what I needed. I’ve gotten back in the habit of reading each night (even finally finishing this!). Last year, I also resolved to temporarily quit Facebook, just to see how it felt. That’s probably on the list of the 10 best things I did in 2015. I'm not going back.

This year, I have two goals, both things I’ve been thinking about and starting to work towards this last month. First, I’m resolved to sweat every day. I know it’s a little cliche, but I don’t mean that I’m trying to lose weight or go on a diet or anything like that. Mostly it’s for my brain. This has been a rough year for my brain. Working up a sweat makes my brain so much healthier and happier. It cuts through stress, anxiety, depression. Before we left DC, at the very least I was riding my bike to work most days. When we moved to Massachusetts this summer (and I started working from home), I really let the habit slip and I suffered for it. So for the last month, I’ve run nearly every day, some days a longer distance, some days barely more than a few minutes. I’m not measuring the success by how far or how fast, but by whether I worked up a sweat. It’s good and it’s my 2016 plan for a healthier brain.

little boxes.

There’s a new job in the mix these days, so for the first time in six months, I have to go somewhere to work (at least a few days a week). It’s a 30 minute walk to get there, so I’m back in the wonderful habit of walking to work, leaving lots of good time for thinking and podcast-listening (this morning, this one). The street I walk down is cheerful, mostly houses and old apartment buildings, not too bustling, but also not too quiet to be unnerving after dark. There are plenty of Christmas lights out. It’s good for my brain to be walking again, walking with a destination in mind. It’s one of the most satisfying things I know.

This evening, on my way back, I stopped in a small bookstore in our neighborhood. I slowly perused the shelves. I was the only one in the shop, so the shopkeeper chatted with me. I decided, on a whim, to buy myself a random book, whatever looked good. I picked this up.

After I left the bookstore, further down the road, I passed a newer apartment building. Condos, I’m guessing, boxy with big front windows. The building was three stories, with two units on each floor. Six big airy windows facing the street, belonging to six different people. In each window, I could see a big flat screen TV attached to the wall. In each window, the TV was on.

I mean, I watch TV too. Maybe not as much as the average person, but I watch my fair share (lately more than my fair share of this). But……….man did it make me feel sad. All of those little houses just the same, TVs just the same, life just the same.

brain-knots

Yesterday we drove down to Pilsen to visit the National Museum of Mexican Art. It’s a lovely little museum (and one of the few free ones here). I’m still thinking about this exhibit and the Mexican Repatriation in the 1930’s, which I actually knew very little about. It’s a good time to learn.

Injustices like that, even things that happened long before my time, drag me pretty low. I can’t stop thinking about it. I always say that I’m meant to work on small causes and at small organizations because I do much better focused on my own piece of the world - what I can do right here and now. Otherwise I tie my brain into knots thinking about how systems got the way they are and how we can make them change. But Jacob says that my brain-knots are a good thing. Maybe they’ll lead me somewhere important one day.

It’s strangely warm out, and I’m flip-flopping between feeling very ambitious and very lazy. I went for a run, so that's good. The final paper due on Tuesday is looming and triggering some strong procrastination urges. I’m also thinking about a big bag of chocolate chips on the shelf and what I could make out of them right now. Actually, I'm wishing someone else would make and deliver some of these (right now).

Otherwise, my wacky and unpredictable life goes on. This has been a strange year full of surprises. It’s a good life. December is nearly half through, so I’m setting a small handful of goals for the new year, like I usually do. No more than 2 or 3. I’m trying to focus on things that do and will make me feel more like me. And I’m getting ready to wrap up this year in a blaze of writing, I hope, not least of all here.

a great writer.

Last week, while sitting at the closest Starbucks (shame) and trying to cram in as much work as possible, an older man crept up behind me holding his laptop. “Are you good with computers?” he asked. I smiled and cleared a spot at my table. “I’m ok,” I answered. He pulled up a chair and sat down next to meet and stammered through something about a spreadsheet. I finally realized that he wanted to copy a spreadsheet from one folder to another. “Oh, that’s easy!” I told him. “You won’t believe how easy it is.”

So I showed him: select the spreadsheet file, control+c, control+v. He couldn’t believe how easy it was. He went back to his table with the spreadsheet in the right place.

An hour or so later, as he was leaving, he came back to my table and told me I was kind. He gave me his business card. We talked about his wholesale flower business, how he had been in the neighborhood for 20 years, how his niece in Israel kept telling him, “Uncle Benny, you need a website.”

He asked what I did for a living, and I told him, "I’m a grant writer." But he heard, "I’m a great writer." And he didn’t even hesitate. “Oh, you’re a great writer! You can help me write things! Advertising, website. Give me your card. I will call you.”

And that was that. I gave him my card. Who knows if we’ll cross paths again, but whatever happens, he’s out in the world thinking I’m a great writer.

On an entirely different note, I can’t stop thinking about this piece on racial privilege. It says a lot of things that I’ve been trying to find my own way to say.

So it’s dark and has been for the past four hours, because it’s December. We hung up a single string of Christmas lights, which is helping. I’m starting some new work tomorrow, thinking about dusting off my bike to get there, thinking about how casual my business-casual can be. On it goes.