I've spent some significant mental time debating myself today: To go home and nap, or stop at the library and write a long-due blog post? That is the question.
As if in answer, a friend posted on my wall that she noticed my long absence from blogging (Blogger has not seen me yet in 2013, I regret to say). No rest for the weary. (Kidding...)
It's not like there hasn't been anything to write about. New Year's Eve itself was a storied success--if you can get over the fact that our TV antenna reception cut out twenty seconds before the ball dropped and so, when the clock struck 2013, we watched it happen on a black screen, heard the big bangs from the neighborhood behind our house (presumably fireworks), toasted our extra-large mugs of champagne in the most disorganized manner.
And since then I've had one weekend to myself, which avoided turning into a party solely by virtue of bad weather combined with my brother's new job (congrats, bro). But that only saved Friday night. Other than that, I've been to Baltimore and Brooklyn, and am this week preparing to be a small group leader for a high school retreat in Ocean City, Maryland.
Off the top of my head, I can name 14 new people I've met since the ball dropped. My evenings are packed with social and personal commitments. This time last year, I was aching for interpersonal, extrafamilial encounters. Here's the closest I got to sharing my resolutions at the start of 2012:
This year, my top resolution is to carve out more free time, take more me-time. In Brooklyn, Borough of Hotties, over the weekend with Karin I read in a book about "artist dates"--basically, weekly appointments with myself nurturing my creative stimuli and impulses. I am excited about this.
When I've been asked so far this year if I have any resolutions, the only thing I have come up with is this: I want to learn to fight. I have never been a violent person, or wished to be; but I think living in the city, and just generally facing the real, driving sexism and racism and ageism and pervasive pain in the world, is making me seek sources of power. Not to wield over others, but to hoard for myself. A coworker-friend who lives in Philly has lately taken to saying, "I am prepared at all times to be attacked." I don't think this is an unusual thing for a young woman in our circumstances to think. We hear about violence against our peers far too often.
Yesterday, contrary to my aching for a free moment, I tried out BodyCombat at the Y. From the website, sticking with this class "tones & shapes; increases strength & endurance; builds self-confidence." Pretty much exactly what I am going for. I will say that I was not in the least disappointed. It was one of the most empowering things I have done in some time, and one of the most intense and satisfying workouts I have ever had. I am expecting to be sore for a short while now.
I'm also hoping this will add depth to my "training" for the Spartan Race I'm doing with a few friends in July. Just looking at the website makes me feel hardcore--or makes me feel like I will have to get a lot more hardcore over the next 6 months. But it is less intimidating than it is a challenge, and we all know how I love (need) challenges.
This year I want to write more, and get involved more with other writers. This means going to more Second Saturday Poets events, and actually staying connected with the people I meet there. It means dragging my roommate (a closet writer, as it turns out) to these writing events with me. I also had beers with a fellow Wilmington-based Ole (!!) last night, who loves and misses writing it sounds like as much as I do. How I would love to grow a really young crowd of writers here!
Speaking of, I never want to stop meeting new people and doing new things. I want to get more comfortable talking to people, starting mutually enriching conversations. I want to stop being so terrified of small talk, but then to take that small talk to the next level. Not necessarily to big talk, at least not right away, but I want to talk the kind of talk that boosts everyone involved for the rest of the day.
I want to be more patient, and more accepting of the wrenches thrown in my carefully crafted plans. I want to become less dependent on such carefully crafted plans, and be able to throw more caution to the wind, leave room for spontaneity.
I want--and this is really my biggest resolution--to recapture wonderment, awe, rapture. And, in turn, devastation. Skepticism. Wrath.
The past two or three months have been full of depression-talk. Talk about feeling depressed, talk about being scared of getting depressed, talk about the neurology and psychology of depression. Beacons blinking feebly into a seemingly very dark and empty sea, smoke signals and mirror morse code flashing back in an unconvincing display that the sea is less dark and empty than it seems.
The surface of that sea began to crack first in a phone conversation with my friend Liz out in Portland, a month or so ago. Roughly quoted, "I think in college we were constantly enraptured, consumed by wonderment. Things devastated us. And now that we are out, there is not so much enrapturement and so it feels like depression. The highs aren't quite as high, and the norm just feels like a droning low."
So it is. An informal survey about our post-grad circumstances has revealed that the intense intellectual, social, spiritual and emotional stimuli of our college years sets us up for a big fall into the routine of adulthood. And this routine, unlike routines of the past, is self-inflicted and seemingly unending. There is no diploma waiting for me anywhere down the road; there are no final exams and there is no specified expiration date. The discoveries we now must make, quickly and suddenly, are discoveries about survival, discoveries of grave significance. And these discoveries juxtaposed with the constant fast enlightenment of the liberal arts education, the designated creative spaces, the Pietri dish of like-minded meaning-seekers... We must be destined for disappointment. We are lost and lonely.
And so, my goal for 2013 is to be devastated, the way I was upon entering a Brooklyn bar on Saturday night to find myself surrounded by incredibly attractive people. My goal is to be starstruck by the beauty of sunrises and sunsets. This year I will be delighted, heartbroken, enraptured, disproportionate to my experience. This year I will feel.
I am resolute. These are my resolutions. What does 2013 hold for you?
As if in answer, a friend posted on my wall that she noticed my long absence from blogging (Blogger has not seen me yet in 2013, I regret to say). No rest for the weary. (Kidding...)
It's not like there hasn't been anything to write about. New Year's Eve itself was a storied success--if you can get over the fact that our TV antenna reception cut out twenty seconds before the ball dropped and so, when the clock struck 2013, we watched it happen on a black screen, heard the big bangs from the neighborhood behind our house (presumably fireworks), toasted our extra-large mugs of champagne in the most disorganized manner.
And since then I've had one weekend to myself, which avoided turning into a party solely by virtue of bad weather combined with my brother's new job (congrats, bro). But that only saved Friday night. Other than that, I've been to Baltimore and Brooklyn, and am this week preparing to be a small group leader for a high school retreat in Ocean City, Maryland.
Off the top of my head, I can name 14 new people I've met since the ball dropped. My evenings are packed with social and personal commitments. This time last year, I was aching for interpersonal, extrafamilial encounters. Here's the closest I got to sharing my resolutions at the start of 2012:
I'm excited to get to know the people I shared the opening moments of the new year with, and I'm excited to get to know new people as well. I'm excited to learn more things and read more books and taste more beers. I'm excited to visit people and host visitors, the first planned guest of the new year being Anna Linn a few weekends from now! I'm excited to stay in touch with far-flung friends and watch all my classmates find new opportunities and passions and whatever else we find this year. Hopefully all good things! I'm excited to listen to new music, watch new movies, to write new poetry and maybe even a novel, this year, and, of course, more blog entries.Check that. Not only have I met a lot of people, including some who are quickly becoming dear friends, but I've read new books and tasted new beers--too many to count. I've traveled and hosted, I've stayed in (surprisingly good) touch, I've gone to the wedding of a good friend. I've fallen in love with new music, seen new movies, written some new poetry, and... OK, no novel--yet. And on top of all that, I have been blessed with hundreds, nay, thousands of priceless moments I never could have foreseen or even wished for.
This year, my top resolution is to carve out more free time, take more me-time. In Brooklyn, Borough of Hotties, over the weekend with Karin I read in a book about "artist dates"--basically, weekly appointments with myself nurturing my creative stimuli and impulses. I am excited about this.
When I've been asked so far this year if I have any resolutions, the only thing I have come up with is this: I want to learn to fight. I have never been a violent person, or wished to be; but I think living in the city, and just generally facing the real, driving sexism and racism and ageism and pervasive pain in the world, is making me seek sources of power. Not to wield over others, but to hoard for myself. A coworker-friend who lives in Philly has lately taken to saying, "I am prepared at all times to be attacked." I don't think this is an unusual thing for a young woman in our circumstances to think. We hear about violence against our peers far too often.
Yesterday, contrary to my aching for a free moment, I tried out BodyCombat at the Y. From the website, sticking with this class "tones & shapes; increases strength & endurance; builds self-confidence." Pretty much exactly what I am going for. I will say that I was not in the least disappointed. It was one of the most empowering things I have done in some time, and one of the most intense and satisfying workouts I have ever had. I am expecting to be sore for a short while now.
I'm also hoping this will add depth to my "training" for the Spartan Race I'm doing with a few friends in July. Just looking at the website makes me feel hardcore--or makes me feel like I will have to get a lot more hardcore over the next 6 months. But it is less intimidating than it is a challenge, and we all know how I love (need) challenges.
This year I want to write more, and get involved more with other writers. This means going to more Second Saturday Poets events, and actually staying connected with the people I meet there. It means dragging my roommate (a closet writer, as it turns out) to these writing events with me. I also had beers with a fellow Wilmington-based Ole (!!) last night, who loves and misses writing it sounds like as much as I do. How I would love to grow a really young crowd of writers here!
Speaking of, I never want to stop meeting new people and doing new things. I want to get more comfortable talking to people, starting mutually enriching conversations. I want to stop being so terrified of small talk, but then to take that small talk to the next level. Not necessarily to big talk, at least not right away, but I want to talk the kind of talk that boosts everyone involved for the rest of the day.
I want to be more patient, and more accepting of the wrenches thrown in my carefully crafted plans. I want to become less dependent on such carefully crafted plans, and be able to throw more caution to the wind, leave room for spontaneity.
I want--and this is really my biggest resolution--to recapture wonderment, awe, rapture. And, in turn, devastation. Skepticism. Wrath.
The past two or three months have been full of depression-talk. Talk about feeling depressed, talk about being scared of getting depressed, talk about the neurology and psychology of depression. Beacons blinking feebly into a seemingly very dark and empty sea, smoke signals and mirror morse code flashing back in an unconvincing display that the sea is less dark and empty than it seems.
The surface of that sea began to crack first in a phone conversation with my friend Liz out in Portland, a month or so ago. Roughly quoted, "I think in college we were constantly enraptured, consumed by wonderment. Things devastated us. And now that we are out, there is not so much enrapturement and so it feels like depression. The highs aren't quite as high, and the norm just feels like a droning low."
So it is. An informal survey about our post-grad circumstances has revealed that the intense intellectual, social, spiritual and emotional stimuli of our college years sets us up for a big fall into the routine of adulthood. And this routine, unlike routines of the past, is self-inflicted and seemingly unending. There is no diploma waiting for me anywhere down the road; there are no final exams and there is no specified expiration date. The discoveries we now must make, quickly and suddenly, are discoveries about survival, discoveries of grave significance. And these discoveries juxtaposed with the constant fast enlightenment of the liberal arts education, the designated creative spaces, the Pietri dish of like-minded meaning-seekers... We must be destined for disappointment. We are lost and lonely.
And so, my goal for 2013 is to be devastated, the way I was upon entering a Brooklyn bar on Saturday night to find myself surrounded by incredibly attractive people. My goal is to be starstruck by the beauty of sunrises and sunsets. This year I will be delighted, heartbroken, enraptured, disproportionate to my experience. This year I will feel.
I am resolute. These are my resolutions. What does 2013 hold for you?
Well, that was worth the wait ;) Very enlightening and beautifully written.
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