While brushing my teeth this morning, I took – what I believe to be – my first deep inhale since Thanksgiving. I guess it’s only when stepping off the merry-go-round do I notice just how constantly I’ve been spinning.
It’s almost time to begin my next hopeful year and looking back just now, I see this will be my tenth year writing (and hoping) here on this blog. Ten years is a long time to commit to anything, really, and while my attention here is often sporadic, I do feel at home here and I’m always hopeful I’ll make it back more often. Maybe this year’s the year.
Because I do have high hopes for this next year and all the wide-open months to come in it. Despite – everything – I am looking forward. I’m ever more self-aware of what I need, want, and hope for. Sitting here on the back end of December I’m dreaming dreams, setting intentions, and making space for all those needs, wants, and hopes.
Maybe there is no greater hope than that found on January 1st, but I’m looking for hope each and every day of this next year. Day after day. One day at a time.
This morning, I rescued my room from a week of comings and goings, fragmented attention, and a too-tired reckoning of I’ll do it tomorrow. All my best intentions and plans and ordinary habits set aside out of necessity – there simply wasn’t enough of me to go around.
It was a week of life-long held mantras: one day at a time, this to shall pass, first things first, and do the next right thing. Phrases borrowed so many years ago, I no longer know who spoke them or wrote them – I know only of their wisdom, their shelter in the sometimes-storm of everyday living.
How lucky am I to have a husband who knows something about buoyancy and friends who bestow patience like chocolates on a pillow when I most need to rest. This week, I’ve learned how hope arrives in an unassuming cardboard box delivered on the front porch and addressed to me – a reminder sometimes dreams do indeed come true.
So this morning I’m delighted by the sunshine through the bedroom curtains and the pile of pillows on the bench. I move this here, that there, and tuck all the stray bits and pieces of a life well-lived into the laundry hamper. Soon my shoes will line up straight back in the closet, and I’ll thank them for helping me stand upright and steady.
There’s hope still in the anticipation of who’s visiting this afternoon, what I’ll be creating next week, and where I’ll be traveling soon.
Maybe I’m the woman who faithfully drinks her water, walks the recommended steps, and picks up her book instead of her phone.
Maybe I’m the woman who naps. Or the woman who cries unexpectedly. The woman who loves to bake, aspires to paint watercolors, and reads poetry.
I know I’m the woman who loves deeply, bruises easily, and fears being faulted – for anything – anything at all.
It’s quite likely I’ll be the woman who never quite reaches her goals, who always just misses the mark, who never quite meets the impossibly high expectations she holds for herself.
She often shows up.
But I’ll try not to be the woman who complains. Who criticizes. Who’s impatient.
Instead, I’d like to be the woman who’s grateful. Humble. Hopeful.
And kind.
For sure and certain, today at least, I’m the woman who writes.
I like to be so delightfully involved in what I’m doing, I couldn’t possibly pay attention to the sun’s rise or fall or the hands moving around the face of a clock.
My sewing project is an example. It’s a project worthy of concentration. Measuring. Cutting with precision. Pinning. Pressing. Measuring again. Stitching. (Perhaps . . . ripping … when necessary.)
Problem is, modern pasttimes distract me.
Through no one’s fault but my own, I’m not as able to concentrate.
When a was a kid, I remember my mother asking me, “If everyone else jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you jump too?” And if she were to ask me today, in 2025, I’d probably answer yes because no matter what everyone else is doing, I spend more time on-screen than I’d like to admit.
Especially to myself.
I enjoy expressing myself on social media. And I love blogging.
What’s also true though is the fact that some of my best ideas come when I’m so immersed, I’ve lost all sense of self. It’s like I’ve escaped myself and find myself all at the same time. No ego. No identity.
Only pure thought.
I’m not sure being on-screen helps me achieve such a state.
As always, I suppose, it’s a matter of balance. A balance of off-line reading and learning with online research and discovery. Balancing relationships here and there. Signing off when I can longer hear myself think. And remembering to press pause once in a while to feel the sun (and cold wind) on my face.
It’s another hopeful year. I’m so glad to be here.
Apparently, it only takes four mixing bowls and thirteen ingredients to lift my mood.
Scoop. Measure. Weigh. Combine . Stir.
Ingredients I control. An outcome I can manage. Actions that make a difference.
This morning my husband came in from the cold, snow, and sleet to a warm house and muffins just out of the oven.
One thing I can do for the benefit of another.
An action – a tiny teaspoon – toward making someone’s world better.
Mood lifted, heart engaged, soul encouraged.
Yes. There is work to be done. Start small.
“I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.” ― Edward Everett Hale
I discovered a pint of strawberries in my teacher book bag last week – an entire day after grocery shopping. I have no memory of placing them there, nor did I notice them missing from their usual spot in the fridge.
I guess I just wasn’t thinking.
Or I was thinking — just not about the groceries, or specifically, the strawberries.
I’m sure the strawberries are symptomatic of a lack of attention. Day by day I notice my fragmented focus — living as I do in an increasingly fragmented world.
There’s simply not enough of my attention to go around.
In 1971 American spiritual guide, Ram Dass, published a book entitled Be Here Now. I’ve not read the book, but I’ve read some of his teachings and heard the title phrase used by others. And if that phrase were a piece of clothing I could wear, I’m sure it would fit me just fine. Today. Now.
It’s a practice, I think. The practice of living each and every moment on its own and for its own merit. Being and breathing and living exactly where I am … and who I am. Hopeful or not. Here now is exactly when and where and who I want to be.
I’d like to gather the fragments of my mind and my tattered attention and focus my way to whole again.
I’d like to remember what I was going to say before my own thoughts so rudely interrupted me. I’d like to reclaim linear thinking and conversation, so I pursue a topic from beginning to end.
I’d like to put the strawberries away — where they belong.
one hopeful year 