December 1 One Word.
Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2011 for you?
2010 is confusion. I don't remember the beginning of the year, really, but I remember how things fell apart in the spring for real and never really got back on track. Things were upended that had been stable on the surface for a long time. And even though I did some smart things in response, I didn't exactly grab the combined chaos and opportunity of a certain Chinese symbol and run with it.
There were good times this year. I know how to function with a certain level of insanity and I made gold out of straw on a number of occasions so I could be with people I cared about in places I cared about being. I wouldn't trade beers on Sarah's patio in the summer or Marcus's wedding or the M3 festival or the beach with my family or BlogHer in New York or the the Creative Alliance in Ojai. I have such good friends and time with them saved me -- a vegan dinner with Elisa on the Upper West Side, an amazing California day with Sue and Deb and then Erin and her family, Ian and Claudia knocking on a borrowed door to come over and see what was going on when I was in their neighborhood, so many good times with Sarah. These are times I'll wish back in later years when I've lost people and things that are an essential part of now.
Yet, I sit here in December unsure of everything -- where to live, where to go, what to do, who to be, who to be with, who to become. I cannot sit calmly anywhere. I am always freaked out. I feel like I'm running out of time to do things and I don't know what those things are. I'm surrounded by calendars with half-filled in pages and scribbled-on bills and a scale that's reading up and up and up no matter that I'm sweating my ass off multiple times a week in a 90-degree room full of people doing difficult yoga.
I am unsure of everything.
One year from today? I want "fulfillment" to capture 2011. I don't know what it will look like. I don't really care where I'll be. I can't describe air or other things I can't yet rightly see. I don't even know if I could identify it anymore from this space I'm in. I'm not sure I've ever had it. But I'm hoping that whatever this is that has reached into my life and shook it like a snowglobe for real this year settles down, and that on the other side I have a clearer path, a calmer heart and a sense that the place I'm in and the direction in which I'm going are good and right and true.
I want to feel good about and resolute in my life, my work, my relationships and my goals.
I don't expect magic. I expect focus and intention, two things I'm already working on in the midst of chaos and confusion, to help me achieve this. I know that what I'm doing now -- the sorting out, the repairing, the throwing away, the acknowledgement of places I've screwed up so I can fix them -- is essential. I know to value the quiet spaces where I'm sketching out what I need to do so I have a long moment's peace. So that even if it isn't perfect in a year -- because when is it ever, really? -- that it is so much better. That it feels like a place I can inhabit without extreme agitation or fear, without the sense that any life would be better, every day.
It's possible, I suppose.
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