And now, it’s Inuary. I love this time of year. For some it’s a bit let down after exciting holidays, but I like the quiet and fresh-startness to it. Once cynical about resolutions, I think I’m growing to enjoy them. New habits can start on any day, and if you get right down to it, we likely could all do well to start with a clean state every day rather than once a year. After all, that’s a lot more of an in-the-moment attitude to have. But I do think there’s also some psychological benefit to the 01/01. It looks promising.

So, as I move into the new year, I do so with resolve. I hope you do too.

Carl Honore Praises Slowness

Though it was filmed in 2005 and posted on the TED website website in ’07, I think it’s more and more relevant each day that passes, mainly because we just don’t seem to be going any more slowly.

I’m a proponent of slow: I’m a writer. I sit down, show up to do the work, words come out. But they’re not always the right ones the first time out and it can take time to uncover the right ones. That’s just how it is. But it takes a feat of will not to develop a complex about it, being surrounded as we all are with “urgency.”  This is not to say I cannot work fast–I can. (A deadline is very “inspiring” to me.) But in order to do my best work, the work I am most proud of, I prefer to do it with a sense of calm and presence. Those are the things that make me produce my best work.

Not whole books. Just a page here or there.

Sometimes when my brain gets a bit overwhelmed, the words themselves, outside of the commitment of a whole story, are soothing.

It’s not the same though to pick up a brand new book, read a few pages and put it back down again. That doesn’t work. It has to be something I’ve read before, something a bit familiar. Something just faintly recognizable, like a book I’ve read years ago.

I find the familiarity both comforting and unsettling, and I’m not sure which sensation I’m reading these smatterings of pages for.

Comfort comes from knowing–knowing what to expect, how you might react. And it’s easy to think you’re not going to learn anything new from something so comfortable, because you think you can have some sort of prescience of the impact.

But then you get surprised.

Herakleiatos is credited with telling us “You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.” Picking up an old book is like trying to step once again into that same river–I always notice the change. Different words will strike me, I’ll “get” an idea like I hadn’t before, I sympathize with a different character, I take an idea for granted that I once thought was illuminating.

And this the unsettling. The realization that things are different, I am different. It’s not the books that change; the words inside them are still the same. Unlike our friends or family, who (presumably) are also changing, books are a static measure against which to gauge where we’ve come.

And sometimes we need just a little hint that the water is still moving.

Though I haven’t been in school for a very long time, for me this month always hearkens a feeling of newness, a fresh beginning. A new year.

With that, I’ve embarked on a journey to realign this website. It’s been here for several years, and I’ve never really gotten a good grip on what I wanted it to be. It’s always been a place holder of sorts. A place where people can find out about what I do (though not in a huge amount of detail) and a little bit about what I think about (though I’m not terribly confessional here, and don’t usually go deep). I’m feeling like it’s time to change that.

What’s interesting about this is that, in a way, it’s also a reflection of something I’m doing on a personal level: a sort of self-realignment. The past year and a half has held a lot of changes for me in terms of work, having moved, some loss (and lots of gain). I take for granted the toll that can take on a person. It’s exhausting. Even when most of the changes are good, change is still tough and it takes a lot of habit forming and new ways of thinking and being to adjust.

And so… though it’s unnerving, I’m making the conscious decision to change this website in an effort to make it more “me”. My hope is that the process will help me distill the purpose of the site better, and in doing so, help it to be a sort of illustration of the other more personal work I’m doing.

I’d be grateful for any feedback or thoughts anyone wanted to share, either on the process, the mechanics, or anything else. Wish me luck!

The Laughing Heart

by Charles Bukowski

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

If these aren’t words to live by…

These words really resonated with me. They are simple, and to my mind, supremely true. For those of us who get a little caught up in our own heads (read: me), it’s a nice reminder of how simple things can really be.