The New Year

As someone who has spent a pretty hefty portion of my adult life in school, finishing my bachelor's degree then graduate school, then married to an academic, plus having a kid in elementary school, I am keenly attuned to the start of the school year. In fact, late August feels like the beginning of a new year to me. January 1^st just feels like the end of the holidays.

This time of year is fraught with change and transition. You can smell it in the air. As a child, it meant new clothes, often a new school and a chance to reinvent myself. In college, it was an escape from my childhood home into the place where I really learned who I was and what mattered most to me. For years, autumn meant the return of someone I loved, someone who would drift away in the late spring and summer and returning to me when the Fall semester breezes began to blow.

My sister and I have commented on this for years, how we both begin to feel a shift, a kind of restlessness in August. It makes me a little anxious and also a little excited about what might lie ahead. It feels like something new is just around the corner, something more substantial than new school clothes and an armload of binders.

I cannot blame it on the weather. August is miserably hot here in South Texas, and we still have a lot of heat ahead of us before things begin to cool off. No matter what the temperature, I still feel the season's change, in my bones, in my heart and head as surely as if there were maples turning crimson in the backyard.

I like the anticipation, leaning hard into what's ahead, even if I don't know what that is.

Turn and Face the Strange Changes

There is so much going on out here. Karen is 84% of the way to her word count goal. Mrs. G has some fancy new digs, and Laura is up to her pretty knees in snow – at least for now.

I am going through, have been going through a bit of a rough patch. I have been feeling off, sort of stuck. Here are the two metaphors I've been using:

• It's like I'm trying to listen to my life at a loud, crowded party. I am leaning in and straining to hear but I just can't make out the conversation for all the background noise.

• It's like I'm sitting in the chair at the optometrist and he's fitting me for lenses, sliding them in and out and saying, is this one better or worse? Better or worse? And they are all worse.

So, I've been doing all the things I usually do if I get into a funk. Stepped up the exercise, no skipping a day of walking or riding my bike, made sure I'm not eating a bunch of processed junk, got some extra sleep, tried to be gentle with myself, but nothing worked. These tried and true remedies, that have always put me back on the right track, let me down and there I was, functioning, but feeling as if I was underwater, disconnected and unable to focus on my life.

Then, a very wise woman (hello, mom) told me exactly what I needed to do. To borrow from Hamlet, "get thee to a therapist." And so I did.

I know some of you have little faith in talk therapy, or have had crummy experiences with bad therapists. All I can say is that it works for me. I can tell in five minutes if a therapist is right for me. It's like dating, almost chemical.

Yesterday, I had my first meeting with M and really, I already feel better. Not perfect, but a little lighter, a little more hopeful.

I feel like I'm heading off in a new direction, hacking away at the jungle around me.

Wish me luck.

Resolution

I have tried every possible permutation of New Year's resolutions.

I've made a detailed list and ignored it.

I've made detailed lists and posted them on walls, inside nightstand drawers, on bathroom mirrors, and one year, on the sun visor of my car.

I've skipped making resolutions entirely.

I've filled a sheet of paper with positive, uplifting things I could do.

I've resolved to do two things and memorized them, doing away with the list entirely.

In short, me and the list of resolutions – not the best of friends. And yet, it's a new year, a new beginning, a clean slate and I want to move forward this year in a lot of ways. I don't want to change my life. I just want to boost the volume, take it up a notch, live a little bit louder.

I want to be healthier so I can walk further and faster. I want to keep up with my kid.

I want to spend more time creating. Whether it is knitting, sewing, photography or writing, I want to do at least one small creative thing every day.

Instead of a list this year, I chose four words to represent these ideas and I'm going to put them everywhere, on the cover of my journal, on the wall, on my screensaver. I'm going to make bookmarks using these words. I'm going to plaster them all over my life.

I'm going to read and write and sing and shout and whisper and chant these words over and over until they become a part of me. I'm going to infuse my life with these four words for an entire year, just to see what happens.

MOVE NOURISH CREATE PLAY

It's a little bit like a list, but not a list. What are you resolving to do in this new year?

I Think I’m in Love

This is kind of embarrassing to admit but I'm usually kind of slow to embrace new technology. Computers, I've always loved them and heck, I spend a large portion of my existence sitting in front of one trying to remember how to spell, but I have been hesitant to move into the world of digital music. In fact, it was not that long ago that both Lefty and I could quote Brian Eno about digital corruption and argue long into the night with anyone who did not prefer the warmth of a recording on vinyl. I won't argue the pros and cons or voice my initial misgivings about digital music here - I am too busy rubbing two sticks together to make fire.

Relax. We did eventually start buying and listening to cds.

I still have cassette tapes, however, that I listen to just for their warped graininess. Mix tapes that my sister made for me, the guitar and voice of an old lover, tapes that sound as old as they are. I will always love these recordings because they exist in physical time, in memory.

You may recall that Santa brought The Kid a MP3 player for Christmas. I put some new songs on it before we left for vacation and wound up borrowing it while I walked on the treadmill a couple of times. It was a meaningless little flirtation but I fell hard, came home and ordered one for myself. Not a fancy ipod from the evil empire, just a simple little player from the same company that made The Kid's. It also has FM radio, good for an npr junkie and a little voice recording device that let's you record short notes to yourself, an excellent tool for the writerly me. I am always thinking of something I must write down when I am miles from pen and paper.

It is a startling experience to put those ear buds in and let music close around me , the rest of the world fades a bit. Normally, I have one ear cocked for the sounds of the other people I live with, Lefty's small sigh at being unable to find socks, The Kid's garbled yelp of "Mom" if he's had a bad dream or fallen with a thump out of his bed. Lefty often comments on how quickly I can jump up from a sound sleep and sprint into the next room. I tell him it's because I'm always half-listening, even asleep. This little chunk of black plastic gives me the chance to wrap some music around myself and get a little distance from all the other things I'm always listening for and I love it for that.

A Little History

When I was in graduate school at the University of Maine, my little sister, who was in high school, lived with me for a while. There were things about this that were incredibly wonderful and, even in hindsight, I have to say almost magical. There were also things about this that weren't cool, mainly my lack of anything resembling parenting skills. I made some terrible choices and botched a lot of things but we came out of it still loving each other and we can both now remember the magical part of that time in our lives.

Yesterday, when I was writing about the doldrums I'm in and the sense that change is coming, it reminded me of something Boots and I used to do when we lived together (and if you check the comments you will see – it reminded her too). We often would get the sense that things were about to happen, something was about to change, and when we did we would sit together, sometimes on the cold back porch, more often in the kitchen at a rickety table, and we would wait. We'd just marinate in the feel of anticipation. On one particularly intense evening, my sister wrote the word WAITING in the condensation on the window beside us.

It was a time in our lives when we both felt intensely creative. It was a time that we have both, in motherhood, looked back on with pleasure, and wondered how and if we would ever feel that way again. We've gone through waves of this feeling of anticipation in the past few years (sometimes separately – sometimes together) and what appears at the end of them is more subtle and less clearly an answer than we had all those years ago. Back then it was a phone call, or the crunch of a certain set of tires on the driveway, or a song that would stop us both in our tracks. Now it's an hour to ourselves in a bookstore on some random Tuesday, or a day long argument that evaporates and leaves contentment in it's place. It's a recognition of oh, here I am. This is where I should be at this moment in time and sometimes, still, it's as simple as a song on the radio.

Something’s in the Air

I have been having a bit of trouble coming up with something to say here for the last few days.

This is how it usually works – I come across something in my regular daily writing and I say, oh, I should blog about that. Then at some point, usually during the morning, I sit down and write my post. Rocket science, it is not. But in the last few days I just haven't been getting to the "oh" part. I'm writing. It's not writer's block, which implies, I think, staring at the blank screen or at the pen in your hand. It is more a lack of inspiration, sort of a stale wind blowing through my brain. I know it will pass – it always does, but still…

After writing this I realized that this feeling has seeped into a few other parts of my life. I'm bored with the knitting I'm doing too and have all but abandoned the projects I'm working on. I'm also tired of cooking all the recipes I have been relying on for the last few weeks. The thought of cooking dinner is tedious and I love to cook.

This sense of dissatisfaction is usually a symptom of preparation – a hint that something in my life is about to change.

On a almost completely different note (but it is about change): The Kid is going through a transition where he wants to have lots of space from Lefty and me, but he still wants us nearby. He has even changed the bedtime routine he and I have had for as long as I can remember. He says, "Just give me a kiss and turn off the light." No talking about tomorrow, no wishes for sweet dreams. I should be glad, I guess, that the goodnight kiss is still on the table. Would it be too much of cliché to say, he's growing up so fast?