The Shape of the Year

The borders between the years are meaningless from a “things are bound to change” point of view. Luck and Chance and Fate don’t care what the date is, be it Monday or January or 2018. There’s absolutely no reason why anything should suddenly get better.

But we stick up a new calendar and turn the page, and we sigh in relief that we survived the past 12 months. We hope for a better dozen to come.

I began to see the vague outline of this year around the beginning of December. I know this will be a year of hard work. Boards need pulling up and earth needs moving and what last year broke still needs to be fixed. Root causes need to be uprooted to allow for new growth.

With luck and perseverance and a little help from others, 2018 will be a year of repair, of redirection, of rebuilding. Changing the landscape. Making improvements that are long, long overdue.

I’m going to try to shape it into a productive year. Apart from the pulling and hauling, I want to start creating again. My litany every January First is always “read more and finish writing the book.” This year, it’s “start reading again and finish writing a book.”

My nightstand staggers beneath an epic to-read pile, and a few unfinished manuscripts wait for me to finish writing them. Lately, one story in particular has been tugging at my sleeve. I’ll take a look at it soon to see if the book in my memory is as good as the one I put onto the hard drive.

I’ve slowly started eating better (shut up, I hear you laughing at the leftover charcuterie I ate for breakfast; I said “slowly”). I’ve begun moving more. Hitting the elliptical machine, doing pushups, trying to get healthier. That, too, will be part of the pulling and hauling this year.

What the year ahead looks like other than that, I don’t know. I’m going to try to fully enjoy the good times while they last, and endure the bad times with patience and kindness. I’m going to try to not worry about what’s to come until it gets here. I won’t always succeed, but I’ll keep trying.

I hope you will, too, and that together we shape something beautiful.

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Quaking

Greetings from Plagueville. Happy *cough* New Year.

It’s impossible to tell what kind of year 2017 is going to be, although given the way the election went, it’s not looking good.

2016 was a year of upheaval. The ground beneath me shifted and shook and crumbled, at times. Some quakes revealed gold beneath the cracked earth; others, sinkholes of unknown depths.

I’m still feeling the aftershocks of the previous year, and haven’t felt steady enough to take a measure of the next 12 months.

Starting  the year in an urgent care clinic hasn’t exactly filled me with optimism. The nasty upper respiratory infection that’s been going around lately struck me down in the dying light of the year. I swear, half my friends are sick with it or something similar; one is so ill, he bruised his ribs from coughing so violently.

It is the worst time for me to get sick. I’ve not shared an update on my dad recently, but he’s dying. That’s the long and the short of it. He couldn’t handle chemo—which, ironically, shrank the tumors—and the subsequent radiation treatments hit him even worse. He’s declining rapidly, and being cared for at home by hospice and my family. But he survived 2016, when so many did not. That’s not nothing.

Being ill means I can’t go visit him nor help out in caring for him. I’m a dull blade or a broken crowbar rusting in the corner; useless. My only role is to host the plague and try not to spread it to others.

For weeks, I cried every time I talked about or thought about my dad. Last week, I stopped crying and haven’t since. I’m not sure that’s a good thing. Something may have broken.

There are other aftershocks from 2016. I’ll be losing good friends at work due to layoffs. My own duties will be changing. I’ll be moving my desk to the second floor, which may seem insignificant to anyone who isn’t a writer; we have rituals, and most of mine are based on location. It’ll take time to adjust to the tenor and frequency of the new space.

The company climate as a whole is changing; it was bought out by another firm, and we’re rapidly being switched over to new tools and processes. New names and faces to learn. So far, it’s been positive (except for the layoffs, of course); I hope that continues.

All ripples in the landscape; waves that started months ago and are spending their last kinetic energy on 2017’s new shore. But the tsunami is my dad.

I wish I could be completely optimistic for the new year. It’s off to a rough start, though, so I suspect it’ll be a monstrous bastard of a year.

Prove me wrong, 2017. Please, prove me wrong.

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