Looking Back

I woke up this morning, and was thinking back to some of the things I've written in the last year. I had to shake my head at some of them. Perspective. I'm thinking, in particular of the post I wrote in which I declared the mornings to be mine. I wanted 3 hours, at least, if I remember correctly. That was back in April, and it was right for the time...I managed to keep up that routine for about 5 months, and it was good to establish it. At the time, maybe I even knew it wasn't permanent – but remembering my headspace when I wrote that makes me think of that line in Joni Mitchell's Come In From The Cold. “...I made some value judgements/In a self-important voice” I'm not sure who I was declaring this righteous new routine to, other than myself. Or why I felt the need to be so adamant about it. I was trying to justify it to myself. Sometimes it is hardest to convince ourselves that it is okay to need what we need – particularly in the moment. All the fears and insecurities we (I) have about not being enough, not doing enough. Permission to just do what you need to do, for yourself, for your sanity, for your health...it can be hard not to feel that that has to be justified, or explained, even to yourself. There was a lot of good that came out of it. It created some patterns for me. I got my body back, at least to some extent. When I need to stretch in the morning, I do. There are still days I'm pretty sore, but not the way I was, for months on end. I'm okay to be on the computer in the mornings when I need to – like this morning. I've been pretty terrible about the computer – I'm way behind on my social media stuff, and my website. I have kept up the writing. I have kept up the reading. I'm determined to pick up my fiddle again before the end of the month. These things are all easier because I gave myself that permission – even if I had to stomp my foot and have a tantrum inside myself to do it.

It's funny, sometimes, the paths we take to get to where we are. There are days I look back and think “why on earth did I choose that route? It would have been so much simpler to go the other way.” Not unlike when I was climbing (which I miss terribly.) It's the need to challenge myself, to see if I can figure it out, and regardless of how much more complicated I make it, I generally find I've learned something valuable.

Resolute

 

A random shot of the fire of a smelting furnace - fire is always an appropriate image!

 

Another year has passed. Everything has changed, everything has stayed the same. I've never been one for new year's celebrations, let alone resolutions. Just the other day I was telling the story of being invited to a friend's for New Year's as a kid. I was a bit confused by the vibrancy of their plans. Sure, we recognized it was New Year's in my house, sometimes we'd even stay up until midnight and toast each other with gingerale (or whatever they were drinking that was age appropriate.) A party, fireworks, outdoor raucous ramblings, running around yelling ...it all seemed a bit much. I've always preferred a quieter observance, I guess, for most things. I do understand the impulse to celebrate things – anything and everything can be cause for celebration, and it should be. I've come to understand that sometimes we truly need celebration – particularly wild, ecstatic celebration. It is part of the human condition.

I most certainly understand the impulse to start fresh, to try to improve, to strive to do better … I've always done that, but I tend to do it a lot more regularly – every day, or whenever I'm faced with beginning or ending or failure. To have it as a New Year's thing just never felt right to me, and so, thinking ahead to what I want to try to do in the coming months my choices feel a little disingenuous to me, but a friend has been posting about goals they set last year and goals they are setting for the coming year, and it made me think about things a little differently. The idea of 52 for 52 presented itself to me – 52 undertakings in various areas throughout the year, one each week. The idea appealed as a good way to try to nurture discipline in some of the things I'm trying to work on.

Definitions of the word resolute vary – the various dictionaries don't want to be identical, after all...but they all boil down to the same thing. Merriam-Webster online sums it up nicely as “marked by firm determination.” I like the feel of that, and I've decided that against all my own misgivings, that is what I choose for this year, I choose to be resolute, to be marked by firm determination. Not just in my undertaking of doing certain things on a weekly basis or better, but in my outlook for the year, in my attitude and my actions I will aim to be resolute. And I will celebrate, albeit quietly. I will celebrate anything, and, I hope, everything. Maybe somewhere in there I will find an occasion that demands wild and ecstatic celebration, and if I give in to the impulse my celebrations will be markedly determined.