hopes and plans

Holiday greetings, dear friends. I hope that you were able to realize whatever you find most enjoyable about Christmas. Even (grudgingly) if what you enjoy most is fighting the crowds in the malls to exchange unwanted gifts today. To each their own.

I can honestly say that Christmas is my favorite holiday. Everything is closed and quiet, it's easy to believe that most people are cozy at home with their loved ones, candles shine in windows, and absolutely nothing is expected of me (aforementioned petsitting notwithstanding).

All that said, I think I will be glad for the new year. There is something unsettled within me now, a small, dark, echo-y place waiting for something to fill and brighten and warm it. This dark time of year feels a bit too encouraging to the hermit inside me, she who would have me stay home and read books and secretly hope for snowstorms to fall in the way of gatherings. These past few weeks have been full of excitement and uncertainty (job, music, coming visitors... hell, even the weather, with our every-other-day-blizzards). I've stayed up too late and consumed too much sugar. Routines have fallen by the wayside. It all combines to make me feel like hiding out and being rather passive toward life. Friends feel a bit too far away, exercise is a distant memory, and the spiritual ground beneath me seems as uneven and slippery as the frozen-slush-covered sidewalk outside my front door.

Of course we should not need such contrived starting lines as the beginning of a new year to motivate us toward that which we want or need to accomplish anyway. But simply because of scheduling, only the new year will bring the opportunities around which I am now trying to stretch my resolve, so it's as good a starting point as any. In the meantime, I look forward to the next few days of reflection on that which has been in this year and that which I hope will be in the next. More importantly, on who I have been and who I hope to be.

In the Jewish High Holy Days service we say: "on Rosh Hashanah it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed..." and though it feels kind of sacreligious to say this (as if it wasn't enough to call Christmas my favorite holiday), it is really now that I feel a certain sacredness in the days and a need for reflection, much more than I did in October. In these days of darkness between the solstice and the new year it feels appropriate to take a good look in the mirror and make some decisions. My life is too full of goodness to take one bit of it for granted. I will be more intentional. I will follow through. I will listen more and better. I will trust in (hopefully benevolent) fate for many things, but I will not be passive about who I am in the world.

I wonder if any of this makes sense to anyone but me. Maybe it sounds like I'm trying too hard to be poetic... it's hard to distill things that feel both really personal and really huge into plain old words. But for some reason it feels important to write these things here. It feels honest, and that's the only real place to start.

Happy Holidays.