So, for the sake of ritual, and renewal, I return here. Even in this newer twilight of a phase of my life, even as the friendships I cultivated verge on their own deaths, I can grasp stability of a sort here. It's as close to religion as one can hope for, the narrative, the background, unchanged, unchanging. Its actually a little bit of a comfort. By typing here or writing in a journal where the audience is either jsolberg or no one at all, I need not worry about self-absorption; even coding is unneccesary at this point, I think. We'll see. *** Retrospective notes: Positive accomplishments: –resolutions (hopwoods, girlfriend, new years at an actual party) –professional development: nothing extraordinary, but passed my subject area teacher cert. tests and designed my first unit and sucessfully taught my first lesson sequence and poetry classes to middle schoolers, attended teacher institutes of both Check The Method and Volume, bolstering understanding of teaching creative writing and poetry –writing and performance: wrote my first non-fiction essays; wrote at least one chapter for AHR; no new club bangers for writing but the general level of craft is rising, if slowly; made the slam team for UM again; performed integrated poem w/ choreography, performed beat box, performed rap. –knowledge base: expanded knowledge in educational psychology and pedagogical theory and practice, developed a functional if basic framework of understanding of american transcendentalism as a movement and literary genre, developed a better historical understanding of reformation era England and Europe, the role of John Milton's work, feminist theory and sexual/erotic ethics, group dynamics –introduction to new skills: pressing flowers, woodblock prints, birding, sailing, knot tying (bowline, rolling hitch, bit) –further development, if slow, of old skills: cooking, sewing, drawing, hebrew –travel: went to Chicago, Maine, Japan, Iceland, Israel (w/out Jon) –health: saw a dentist That which was overcome –Depression –Loss of exercise regimen –Loss of poetry community –Loss of school placement (thrice!) –Bullying –Friend drama/girl drama/group drama *** I reviewed the previous years resolutions. Of the 8 that I made, 2 actually came to pass: I managed to win another hopwood award for poetry (once again, the anonymity is seriously under attack), and, for a while at least, I had a healthy relationship with a girl. Didn't last, but such is life, and I broke my 3-month barrier and nearly hit 5 months, not that I'm counting– my next boundary would have been 6 month from 3 month anyhow, and frankly, I feel as if that's more an indicator of being committed to a serious relationship than being able to sustain one for a sufficiently long window of time. I don't think I'm going to worry about it excessively; what I realized from the last relationship's breaking down is that it is more important to me to feel as if I'm being who I want to be, living from day to day in a manner that I think is healthy, playful, and growing than it is for me to have the formal title; besides which i think that the cultivation of strong long-term friendships is a more worthwhile pursuit. Of the six remaining, the record is a bit more ambiguous. Playing an active role in Wordworks and the poetry community generally was precluded by commitments to the School of Education and the fact that I am preparing to exit the poetry community locally after I graduate– it's neither responsible nor sustainable to shoulder responsibility without capacity building, and both of those works require timeframes I simply don't have. Earning and saving is a moot point as I switched to living entirely off of parental largesse in anticipation of the fact that as a student teacher I will being working 40 hours a week with no pay, so attempting a job on the side is unneeded stress. I did manage to stick to the "not spending next new year's alone or in a hotel room," however, I have no guarantee that when the time of the countdown comes, I will be with either friends or some form of a New Year's kiss; that is with the fates, who while not cruel, are also not proactively kind. This turn of events is my own fault for not arranging something for myself ahead of time, but I forgive myself and look forward to tonight. Writing, spirituality and art being made every day never really happened, though I definitely had spurts of time in which I was writing daily, or attempting to meditate daily, or making a poem daily. This ties into the lack of balance in my life generally which I alluded to earlier and which serves as a pointed failure to my resolution from the previous year– I think I decided to give it up this year in favor attempting to achieve excellence in my field as an educator, which is a good idea over the long term but is also not a process that can or should be hurried by sacrificing the parts of one's life that allows one to function happily or healthily. With all of these things in mind, I present the next year's resolutions: 1. I will exercise regularly, and in exchange allow myself the extra expenditure of money, time, or water (for showering twice a day) as needed with the understanding that maintaining a lifestyle of roundedness and care for myself is more important than any short or even medium term (several months, a year) gain. 2. I will make my earnest attempt to publish in anywhere between 5-10 different magazines or online publications, or 4 accepted published poems and a final hopwood award. Towards that end, I will budget an allotment of weekly set time to achieving said goal. 3. I will have more patience with myself with the respect to the academic and professional success I expect from myself; I hereby declare that I would rather get less done in a lifetime and enjoy life more than get more done in a lifetime and be nagged by the endless drive to succeed. 4. Because I understand how integral poetry and art are to my own mental and spiritual well being, I will set a realistic but hopefully binding goal of generating 1-2 poems a week. If I have time and energy, I will push towards writing two. 5. I will live a more balanced life. 6. I will settle some sort of post-college arrangement of at least 1 year's worth of time. 7. I will develop a network friends and colleagues (that can work both individually AND as a group) upon whom I can rely on for support. I will work harder to trust in others. 8. I will cut down on the amount of time I spend watching television or its equivalent on my computer, substituting it with reading or writing, whether artistically or reflectively as seen here. Best of luck to me in keeping those bad boys; we'll see how I fare. Happy New Year world. -g. | 