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.
A chilled breeze ruffled and tossed and danced with our country’s flag mounted on a pole off the front porch.
The same breeze whispered through tall crowns of white pine and hemlock next door and hustled a lone, brown oak leaf across the street.
More than one plane rumbled overhead across the sky, its passengers oblivious to my witness below.
I think about hope this morning in such terms of sight and sound. I wonder, if I kicked off my slippers and walked across the still-green grass if I could feel hope there, grounded as I would be and finding my way across cold and frost and a bit of fear.
I had hoped to hear the call of geese, but this morning chickadees and crows called to me and anyone else who’ll listen.
Like a prayer, I silently promise to listen. Content with whatever hope I can find.
I discovered this morning my watch now measures the amount of time I spend in daylight.
In addition to this new feature, I’m able to access up-to-the-minute functions of my health: my blood oxygen level, how steady I am while walking, the rate at which I climb stairs and how many flights I’ve climbed, the duration and quality of my sleep, my respiratory rate, and my heart rate under a variety of conditions. Among other useful health data checkpoints.
But what I ask myself most often is … how do you feel?
I’ve been keeping my own sort of data. Little colored hearts on a calendar. Each color a measure of how I feel upon waking. Do I feel calm? Anxious? Rested? Happy?
I am (and feel) more than the sum of my data. And if I’m honestly able to answer how I feel, I’m more likely to ask and answer the next question … Why do you feel this way? And the next … What will you do about it?
These are important questions for me to ask and answer.
I know the health data my watch provides is helpful, and even necessary as I monitor a heart condition. And for the record, I’ll try to spend more time outside in daylight today than I did yesterday.
But my watch provides no measure for hope.
That’s one data point I’d like to keep track of on my own.
one hopeful year 