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2011: Looking Forward

The new year is coming in about an hour and a half, and I am as prepared as I can be. I have just spent the last four hours going through shipping and inventory folders, the last couple days driving and visiting and getting my hair cut, and the last week drafting lists and outlines of projects (generally work-related) for the new year.

Usually, years come and go a little too quickly for me to prepare. I find my resolutions are usually made closer to March than January. This year is different. I've been mentally preparing for the changing tides for almost a month. I have looked forward to this otherwise superficial shift in the calendar with a patient eagerness. The song in my head for Christmas 2009 was Sufjan Stevens' "Sister Winter," but for 2010 I have been humming his "Chicago," with the joyfully resounding lyric "All things go, all things go!"

I am packing up the sack I will take with me from one season to the next. I am keeping little, but all of it precious, some of it awkward, and still more of it a little adventuresome. The things I'm leaving behind? I am too close to 2011 to recount them. They are at my back. I have moved on.

I have fears about the coming year. They are pretty enormous, actually, and most have to do with honoring serious commitments to other people and paying bills. I rarely worry, and I'm even less often afraid, so this is unusually hard for me. Please ignore the deepening lines in my forehead and at the corners of my mouth. Ignore them, or pray for me.

I have hopes for the year, too. They also have to do with the commitments I've made to others and the paying of bills, but they also have to do with remembering a lot of things I've forgotten in the last five years or so, rebuilding some things I've let crumble, and exploring some other things I've only just begun to discover. Vague, am I? Sorry, but this blog is still too public for everything in my head.

(I can share this small one, though. I am greatly hoping to read more non-work-related books in 2011. I read four such books last year, and that had to be some sort of record of lameness. Incidentally, all four were YA books. Much as I love them, that is just not right.)

I will not last till midnight. I say goodbye to 2010 an hour early. In sleep, I forget you. The morning brings a new day. Goodbye, and God be with you.

Comments

  1. Hello, I'm Emily Clare.11 January, 2011 21:04

    i keep wanting to comment on this post but don't know what to say. so, 'hey there. i read your blog. i like when you post stuff like this even when its cryptic. k, bye.'

    ReplyDelete

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