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Wonder and Wishes

Posted in Books, Bookshops, Fun, Getting It Together, Hope, Lists, Resolutions, Wonder, Writing, tagged , , , , on January 1, 2025| Leave a Comment »

I almost chose “if” for my word of the year.

If I want this, then I’ll need this in place.

If this happens, this is how I’ll respond.

If I’m going to stay at the same place, this is how I want it to improve.

If I wasn’t careful, this theme would lead me into a world of rabbit holes and contingency plans. I’m not opposed to either of those things, but I’m not sure I’m at a place to take on a whole year of them.

In other words, “if” isn’t quite ringing true for me. I want a word that captures the mystery of “if…” without the ellipses. Without boxing myself into its implied necessary action. I’m not opposed to taking action. I’m just wary of obligation. 

So instead of “if” and all its intense expectations, I’m going to dive deep into wonder and all of its questions.

Merriam-Webster has several definitions of wonder that I love:

  • A cause of astonishment 
  • The quality of exciting amazed admiration
  • Rapt attention or astonishment at something awesomely mysterious or new to one’s experience
  • To feel surprise
  • To feel curiosity or doubt
  • Marvel
  • Miracle

Yes, please. All of that. I want a year of being open to mystery. I want a life that leaves room for both curiosity and doubt. I want a year on which I can look back and marvel.

After all, I’m turning 50 this year. I want to be open to big things. 

This is one of my favorite days of the year – the day that I make resolutions and set goals for the next 12 months. It seems contrary to the nature of wonder, however, to predetermine what is going to happen the whole year. So I’m going to jot down some wishes – things that might be fun or interesting – with just enough structure to be measurable in case they develop into actual goals but also enough room for interpretation to allow them to evolve or disintegrate as needed, depending on…*gestures broadly*

My wishes for 2025:

  • To read 180 books (per yesterday’s post).
  • To look for opportunities for wonder. I want to be charmed by the world. I want to recapture the delight in simple things and little kindnesses. I crave whimsy. And I don’t want it just for me – I want to share it.
  • To buy 50 books (one for each year I’ve been alive) in person from independent bookstores. Originally, this goal was to buy 5 books each at 10 different bookstores, but then I started listing bookstores I want to visit..and it’s more than 10. So still 50 total, but I’m going to spread the love a little more broadly.
  • To cook at least 50 meals. This past year was unusual, and there were whole months in which I did not cook at all. To be clear, that doesn’t mean I just ate takeout (although I did that more frequently than usual). A lot of the food I buy is premade and ready to assemble and eat as snacks or salads or sandwiches, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Fed is best. But I also miss cooking, and I feel better when I do so on a regular basis. I want to average at least one cooked meal a week (with a couple of weeks off during staff training or holidays).
  • To set and meet 50 small financial goals. I didn’t talk about the goal I set for my finances last year, because medical expenses are expensive and I didn’t have the confidence that I’d actually be able to make it. But I did. I saved a month’s salary in an emergency fund. And then I made the first payment on a medical bill (which is exactly what emergency funds are for, I guess). And I built my savings back up. And made another first payment on a different medical bill. And I have – for the third time – almost reached a month’s salary in savings again. This didn’t happen spontaneously, though. I did it by setting monthly financial goals for both my outgoing budget and my savings. This year, there are additional things I want to do that will help me (eventually) draft a retirement plan, so I’m going to work those goals in as well. I do not harbor delusions that I will be able to retire fully any time soon (if ever), but with a little preparation, I think I can see a lighter workload on the distant horizon.
  • To write 50,000 words. This may be one story, or it may be 100. I just want to get back into a regular writing practice.
  • To consistently meet daily goals on my Finch app. Most of my reminders to eat, or drink water, or do something creative (whether that be writing or knitting or music or whatever), or take a walk/stretch break, come through Finch. Neurospicy folk, gamify the daily activities everyone else thinks of as habits. This app has helped me so much.
  • To make a list of 50 fun things to do in the next 10 years. I already have a few ideas, but I am going to take the whole year to decide what makes the final cut. Something to look forward to!

This is a long and ambitious list, and I fully expect my intentions to wax and wane as the year throws whatever curve balls it’s got up its sleeve. After all, sometimes just surviving is the only accomplishment a person needs to achieve.

But these wishes give me hope and spark a little bit of the type of wonder that I desperately want this year.

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2024 in Review

Posted in Alive, Books, Getting It Together, Health, Mental Health, Quiet, Reading Challenges, Resolutions, Writing, tagged , , on December 30, 2024| Leave a Comment »

[Prime reviewing/contemplating/reflecting space – a blanket and a cup of tea in front of twinkly lights]

How many times can I say this year has been a doozy without it becoming redundant? Welp, here’s one more time.

This year was a doozy.

I’ve tried reflecting and looking back for the past week, as is my custom. Most years – but particularly this year – I resonate with Kate Bowler’s feelings on reflection. I get stuck on certain things and forget so many others, even with the aid of my journal and planner (which in many ways is even more telling than my journal). The older I get, the more I realize that maybe the end of a year is too soon to reflect on it. I am usually still too close to it to ponder it with any real clarity.

But what I can do is look at the goals I set and see how I fared in measurable ways. So let’s dive in.

2024 Theme – Quiet

In many ways this year was very loud. But that especially drove home my need for carving out quiet time, and I had a small amount of success with that.

The intentional pursuit of quiet helped me to find space to heal both mentally and physically.

It also revealed how much work I still have to do in those areas. I didn’t always succeed at finding space, and my medical challenges this year made sure that it was really obvious when I didn’t. Getting quiet time is a lot of work, but it’s necessary and worth it.

Even when I’m “quiet,” I’m still anxious. It takes a lot of time I don’t always have to calm my brain enough to get the needed benefit from quiet moments.

Another challenge is that I don’t really have physical places to find quiet. My upstairs neighbors are loud and active, so even when I’m quiet, my environment still isn’t. And to go anywhere else is to inevitably have to socialize or be perceived or get distracted. Going forward, I need to find a way to really be at rest. I would prefer it to be an actual physical space, but earplugs have been a little helpful in the meantime.

I’m not quite done with quiet, nor do I think I’ll ever be. I have goals for the upcoming year that will help me continue to explore it.

Read 180 Books

I’m so close. I have read 175 so far. It’s possible to reach 180 by midnight tomorrow, but I don’t see myself forcing it just to meet my goal. I am enjoying looking at my Storygraph charts, and I may share one or two tomorrow when I talk about reading goals for 2025.

Even if I don’t finish any more books this year, aiming for this lofty goal still helped me read 20 more books than last year. I consider that a success!

Creative Education

All things creative pretty much tanked for me this year. I did have a few performances with beloved friends, and I have been able to be more active in choir this fall. But with the exception of a few brief inspired frenzies, my writing has been at a standstill.

I am not any further on The Artist’s Way than I was last year at this time, and I haven’t really cared about creative education at all. Looking back, I can admit this goal was a little unreasonable.

What has changed is that I would have felt really dejected about this pause in the past. But I don’t feel that way today. I am satisfied with how I’ve spent my time this year, even if that meant I didn’t heavily pursue a lot of the things I love. My attention was simply needed elsewhere, and I honored that. I am proud of myself for doing so.

Health Goals

I’m alive! I did it!

I survived cancer and cancer treatments, both of which tried to take me out.

As part of that survival, I also built some stronger, healthier skills that I hope to take into the new year. Also, I’ve learned to call them skills instead of habits, because apparently habit isn’t a thing my brain does. This was one of the helpful revelations that came out of therapy this year. For me, there’s no doing things without thinking about it. Even if I do something every day for a year, the moment I don’t remind myself (that is, actually set reminders or leave lists in a place I know I’ll see them), I drop it like I’ve never even heard about it. Everything has to be a conscious choice every time.

Which sounds exhausting (and it can be). But it’s also liberating. It frees me from trying to make progress the way other people do. Instead, I can focus on my goals in a way that actually works for me.

And it’s working beautifully so far.

So that’s the year. That’s 2024. Overall, I’m pretty satisfied with it.

I hope you are satisfied with your year, too. Feel free to brag on yourself a little in the comments.

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Friday Five – It’s Friday

Posted in Alive, Denton, Friday Five, Getting It Together, Health, Lament, Mental Health, Revolution, tagged , , on November 8, 2024| Leave a Comment »

It’s Friday, everyone. We made it. 

I am anxious about my health, my job, my friends (especially those of us whom the prevailing culture seems to want to annihilate), my country, and the world in general. I am not ok.

This week has been a lot, and it’s Friday.

It’s Friday, and I love you, and here are some things I want you to remember to do.

I hope your weekend is restful, and I hope you get to spend it with people who have your best interests at heart.

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Day 14 – Correct vs. Fun

Posted in 31 Days, Health, Mental Health, Music, Work, Writing, tagged , , on October 14, 2024| Leave a Comment »

“…because she didn’t know if it was better to be correct or fun, and why did it feel like she always had to choose between the two?”
Alison Espach, The Wedding People

Almost halfway through the month, and this is the quote that is resonating with me most this morning. I feel this way in several areas of my life.

It comes through in my art. There is a tension between my training and my enjoyment. I outline and then write a rough draft and then edit…except that is more focus and work than I can commit to right now. So I keep writing but in ways that are more fun. I blog, I write bad poetry (and let it stay bad…for now), and I experiment with stream-of-consciousness journaling. I am a classically trained pianist, but I have found so much freedom in just sitting at the keyboard and playing around with whatever sounds, chords, and melodies come forth. I stick to just enough of my dance basics to be safe (turns out, the basics of dance are mostly about avoiding injury) when I fling myself about in a haphazard way in my living room. I love the foundation that my training has given me but I also love breaking out of it when I need to.

It comes through at my job. I don’t think I’m a good manager. I want the job to be fun for my team, but I spend so much of my day harping on corrections – mostly about basic stuff they should already know – that I feel more like a nag. A nice nag, but a nag nonetheless. I also find it exhausting and dehumanizing to be held responsible for the actions (or lack thereof) of other people with precarious levels of give-a-damn. I know it’s not a unique problem – this is just management in a nutshell – but it’s still gross. I’m still waiting for the big bucks that are supposed to make it worthwhile to hit the bank account. I need to learn how to be inspiring, but I just don’t know that I’m that person.

It’s coming through in my life in general right now. Life isn’t super fun these days. Or, it can be, but there is a high price for anything that lasts longer than an hour or uses a lot of energy. The “correct” thing is to rest and not overdo it, but it takes so little to overdo it that I’m not sure that’s even a reasonable expectation. Overdoing it and the ridiculously over-the-top physical consequences of doing so seem inevitable. This would be a great time to be independently wealthy so that I could spend my precious energy only on fun things.

One of the ways I’m slowing my roll this month is not being super picky about writing a post every single day. It will happen most days – just not every day. It’s especially nice to take a break on the weekends.

Where do you get caught up in the struggle between being correct and being fun? Or do you? Is it just me?

Reflecting on my reading this month…

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Five Minute Friday – Write

Posted in Five Minute Friday, tagged , on October 4, 2013| 4 Comments »

It’s what I do.  It’s who I am.  It’s the thing that jolts me awake, when a story doesn’t know what time it is – it just knows that it needs to get out there.

It’s what I want to do.  It’s who I want to be.  It’s the thing that I’d like to do in the real time of the day, not just in little pockets of time that I scatter around like chicken feed.

It’s something I’d like to get paid for doing.  That way, when people say, “What do you do for a living?” I could respond, “I’m a writer,” without feeling the urge to attach a disclaimer.

But it is what I do for a living, at least for the part of living that matters.  The part that doesn’t have a price tag attached to it.

I write to vent.  I write to create.  I write to love.  I write to mend.  I write to connect.

I write because I want to write.  I write, because I want to live in a world where we get to do the thing that we love the most, because a world full of people doing what they love has got to be a better world than the one we have.  It’s the world we could have.

I’m linking up with Lisa-Jo Baker – what does your five-minute Friday look like?

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Guest Post at Andilit!

Posted in Andilit, Writing, tagged on September 25, 2013| Leave a Comment »

I have the honor today of guest posting over at Andi Cumbo’s blog while she’s in the final countdown week before her wedding.

I write almost every day.  Writing is the only way that I’ve figured out how to get my charming friends who live in my head to come into the world and play without making me look like a crazy person.  I don’t always write well, but I write easily.

I also get distracted easily.

Grab a cup of coffee, and join me at Andi’s place to read how I manage the distractions.

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