Taking a Break

In general, I want to be better at things.

Actually, that's a lie.

I want to be naturally gifted at everything I do and never have to put in the effort of practicing in order to gain skills or a higher level of competency. 

But I've been told that that's not how anything works, and so, in general, I'm willing to practice and try and try again. The wonderful thing about keeping up a regular blog is that I get plenty of practice at writing. The terrible thing about keeping up a regular blog is that I get plenty of practice at writing in the same style and with the same level of effort. I'm comfortable and conversational and I'm not exactly sure that that's what I need to be practicing. I've entrenched some habits that I've found to be a little problematic. 

Since I know that about myself, I'm going to take some time away from the blog, do some evaluating, and hopefully come back with better posts that are less "let me dump all my feelings on the internet for strangers to see" and more "let me process my feelings in a way that will hopefully allow strangers on the internet to have more empathy for others." I want to practice being more thoughtful and less reactionary and I need some space to figure out how I want to do that.

Besides, last semester was a whirlwind and I could use a little bit of breathing room. I want to stare out a couple of windows and let my mind wander for a couple of hours each week instead of slamming my fingers against the keyboard, trying to make sense of things that I should probably just sit with. It'll be good for me. 

And some space will probably be good for you too. Take the fifteen minutes each Wednesday that you might have otherwise used to read through what I write and do a little bit of staring and thinking of your own, away from the internet. Here's hoping it's a restorative break for us all. 

New Year

2017 was a whirlwind.

So much happened that my person journal is broken up into two pieces, one that starts in January and one that starts at the end of June, because I felt that 400 single-spaced pages was a bit much for a document. So much happened that, as friends recount stories, I say, “Oh, yeah, that happened this year!” So much has happened that I have multiple print calendars and planners to reference and I still have problems processing everything I did this year. It’s worse than the year I spent less than half of the days sleeping in my own bed.

2017 was breathless.

This entire year was like that time in the fourth grade that I fell off the landing of the playground at church, not the old metal one, but the new wooden one, before they got the new new plastic one. I was gonna slide down the fireman’s pole, this thing that I’d been scared of since I first saw it, and I reached out and I grabbed hold and I was going to slide and then suddenly I wasn’t. The sky appeared and started rushing away from me and the ground came out of nowhere and pushed the air from my lungs and every time I tried to fill them again, a thousand knives stabbed me from the inside and the outside, leaving me wanting to scream but without the air I needed to, which was maybe the most frightening thing of all. 2016 was the fall, 2017 was hitting the mulch and the subsequent fight for oxygen.

2017 was interminable.

They say that as you get older, the years start to rush by. I don’t know who “they” are, but my twenties have been some of the longest years of my life and that doesn’t really seem to be letting up.  This year dragged on. It was a whirlwind, it was breathless, and it kept on going. 2017 was like being trapped in a perpetual hurricane. No, 2017 was like treading water in the ocean with the tide forever coming in. No, 2017 was a never-ending dust storm. Nothing ever settled long enough for me to get my bearings and I started to think that the only thing I had ever been was dusty.

All of this is, of course, slightly dramatic. On a local level, it was like most other years. 2017 was a mixture of good and bad, with fewer personal tragedies than usual, I guess. I settled into a comfortable chaos sometime around September and while I’m glad 2018 looks to be less busy, I don’t regret how full my life was. I am uneasy about how my life intersects with the larger world, but I think I’ll be spending some time unpacking this year for a while yet.

That’s why I made everyone else talk in our year-end video on the vlog.

I’m not really sure what I want to leave in 2017. I’m not sure what I want to take into 2018. I know 2018 is a few days old already, but you have the option every day of setting something down and not picking it back up. I’ve got time. I want to leave insecurity, I guess, and exhausting myself, but I don’t want to carry pure bravado and desperate self-preservation in their place. I want to leave bad thoughts behind and take good thoughts with me. I want to be able to tell the good thoughts from the bad. I want to want the right things. I want to know what it is I should want.

In the end, all metaphors and constructs fail us and so maybe this was never going to be a method of processing that was going to work for me. Or maybe this year was dense and I need to do more work than I thought. Either way, I think I can say, along with most other people, that I’m glad 2018 is here. I’ll read more books and drink more water and exercise more often and sleep better and do my best not to obsess over the things that 2017 wouldn’t let me set down.

That seems reasonable.