It’s February already! Belatedly, a happy change-of-the-calendar to you. In 2016, I feel saner than I have in a long time. Things are going well for me.
I found this list of Woody Guthrie’s 1942 new year’s resolutions —
I have some of the same ones. These things we have to tell ourselves over and over again, these things that are never done — they are the same for me in 2016 as they were for Woody Guthrie in 1942.
In 2015, I didn’t learn CSS or budget particularly well, and I still haven’t managed an unassisted pull-up, but I did get through the whole year without a major running injury, I climbed outside a few times, and I definitely went on a week-long backpacking trip, times five. I also summitted two snowy peaks (Mount Saint Helens and Mount Adams), learned to glissade, self-arrest, lead belay, and ascend a rope with prusik friction knots, quit my job, partied with lots of people I love at the wedding of one of my best friends, went back to school, started a new job, joined a church, navigated (with varying levels of intentionality and good communication) some changing relationships, and lived nowhere / too many places at once before finally settling in at my parents’ in-law unit.
This year, I want to get A’s in all my classes, get my credit card balance to zero and keep it there, remember to get outside and get exercise, and, most importantly, nurture my friendships, old and new.
At church the last few Sundays, during the season of Epiphany, we’ve been ending services by singing “This Little Light of Mine,” which was also sung at my wedding to A. in 2012, at the end of our ceremony, while we led our friends and family in a confused and beautiful spiral dance under a big white tent on my parents’ lawn while it rained and the sun shone. Here’s how it makes me feel, to sing it at church: that all my mistakes and victories and celebrations and epiphanies and despair and lessons learned and long walks and falls and collisions and hurt and coming together and repair and healing and more mistakes have added up to what I have and where I am.
And what I have is good to have, and where I am is good to be.
I know how to take care of myself. I know how to eat all right. I know the value of exercise and a deep breath of cool air in the northwest woods. I know that the best way to deal with my frustration with a terrible professor whose class I can’t drop is to sit patiently through it, stewing, and then go to the gym and spend the length of the class over again trying to get the final crazy bat-hang move of a bouldering problem, laughing and swearing every time my toes slip off the ledge above my head and I fall sideways onto the crash pad. I know how to be patient. I know when to wait and when to ask for what I want, and I know that I won’t always get it, and I know how to take care of myself when that happens. I know I have a lot more to learn. I know I know more than I give myself credit for, sometimes. I know I’m doing okay.
