Happy New Year!
I was trying to post all day yesterday to wish all three of my readers Happy New Year, then finally realized this morning that the reason I couldn’t log into Blogger was that I went on a cookie-blocking binge a few weeks back as part of a campaign to keep my laptop from being overridden by junk… good intentions and all that, wot wot.
2004 was a pretty intense year on a lot of personal levels. I’m hoping that I got enough of my shit worked out physically, mentally and emotionally that I’ll make the most of 2005, not just whine about missed writing opportunities and my soul-sucking dayjob and the fact that the society we live in expects me to pay more than $100 for a nice pair of boots. However, all is not yet settled and well from 2004 - the remains of last year do not lie queiscent, neatly preserved in memory’s aspic as I would have them.
I suspect myself of having a touch of OCD from time to time, as my level of concern with getting everything on my mental list checked off before embarking on some new grand endeavor makes things fairly manic and ugly in my head. I keep trying to talk myself down from freaking out about everything I don’t have done yet… I start school at Antioch on January 3rd, and that date has become an arbitrary deadline for getting everything else in my life squared away to the best of my ability. Which means that the toilet that needs replacing in the guest bathroom should have been done by now, our O’Keefe and Merritt stove should have been repaired so we can use the oven again, my office should have new desks and books properly in their bookshelves and lots of blank notebooks and the stereo all hooked up for studying/writing mood music, the closets should be emtpy of superfluous clothing, the refrigerator should be clear of inedibles, the pantry scoured for donations and all remaining cans lined up in alphabetical order, ChristmaHanuKwanzaakah cookies baked and distributed, holiday greeting cards with our new address sent out, all books in the house organized into some semblance of order, Angus the Wonder Puppy happily walking on-leash, a dozen submissions of poetry and short stories made today before the demands of school suck my brain out of my head and my free time along with it, my car washed and detailed, my resume updated in case the perfect job running disaster relief management and writing about it comes available, my finger and toenails perfectly done, my hair cut, my ankle totally healed, and all the torn-up wrapping paper from Christmas presents that we’re not going to give to the puppy to play with after all thrown away. Somewhere in there I probably should have accomplished peace in the Middle East, provided an inexhaustible source of fresh food and water for all the tsunami victims, and completely paid off the mortgage on our new house.
Meh. Who ever really liked aspic anyway? 2004, for all its sometimes-painful intensity, was also visited with many blessings of friends near and far, family old and new, and health regained and renewed. And everything that remains on my to-do list is a result of those blessings.
How will I spend the day today and tomorrow? Doing what really matters in the moment. Hanging out with loved ones and relaxing. Enjoying the calm before the storm. I might, just might, clean the refrigerator…