It's the day before the night before. Tomorrow is New Year's eve and the next day, somehow the clocks are presumed to start over because of some arbitrary calendar thing. If I were Herb, I would probably look up the origins of calendaring, but I am not Herb. But I am not immune from the desire to start over at many of the things that are part of the daily patterning. And I am as unlikely to succeed in those resolutions as most, though I am determined to try. Of course I expect to lose weight and become more fit. Of course I vow to balance my life better and spend more time doing the things that nourish, instead of focusing on the toxic tasks and those that are do-able and can be checked off the list rather than the ones that are more consuming. But as I sit beside the wood stove, I am thinking of all this year has brought - a marriage at the top of that list. It is not something I would have predicted a year earlier. And I wonder, like most of us, where I will be on the day before the night before 2013. And this year, the stakes seem different.
I know this much.
We are blessed in our broad circle of friends and I am only sorry that I haven't spent more time with each of those we love. I am sad at how much of the casual dropping-in friendships that were part of our earlier lives have disappeared under the mounds of to-do's. I resolve to be better at that, and at keping in touch.
Because of our commuting lifestyles, I have been unable to make the contributions I wanted, to the communities in which we live. I have allowed passive acts like reading the news on-line, to substitute for action. I resolve to try to act in some small way each week, to make the change I want to see. Because of the logistics of life in early 2012, most likely, that will mean writing, rather than running for office or funding campaigns for change. While Vermont is blessed with terrific state officials, I agree with Paul Krugman that "too often political journalists mistake the theater of policy for reality (or don’t care about the difference)" and therefore the politicians spend their time grandstanding to those who are most likely to get them a media moment or who will support them financially. Certainly there is too much distance between a constituent's pleas and the passage of policy. But I have been speaking to "the converted" and I need to act on what I have been saying, and act where it might, maybe, just possibly, make a difference in the way one person votes or acts, or in one place.
I resolve to work on work. I have spent less time than I should, on the things that can make a difference in the lives H and I lead. We are apart too often, and I am responsible for not thinking hard enough about how to build the change we want to see in our personal lives. It is easier to do what is familiar than to imagine something new. A colleague sent a Christmas card quoting Nelson Mandela: "It always seems impossible until it's done." I commit to that - to making the work we want rather than fitting the niches that others provide for us. That entails believing that I can make what I want, and right now, that may be the hardest task I set for myself, but I commit to tilling that ground, though right now, that looks about as unclear as where we will be on Dec. 30, 2012.
There are other resolutions... to front-burner the book I have been working on for decades now, to get out of the desk chair for something other than eating and sleeping, to listen more carefully and not multi-task while I should be paying attention. But most of all, I resolve to push the demons aside, for part of each day, and be grateful for what entered my life with great joy in 2011. And that includes you ...and my dear H.
A bounteous 2012 and peace to all, and much much love....
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