I fell while skating last week and hurt myself enough that I cannot overcome an instinctual hesitation on the ice. And I need to overcome it: I have a skating test in 10 days.
So I wrote about it today and published it on my other blog: link.
Jimmy asked me, “Did you feel better after writing it?”
I replied, “Yes. A little.”
But not enough.
We returned the unwanted gifts to the stores in time for the 30-day return limit.
I packed up the ornaments, took down the artificial tree, vacuumed, undecorated the mantle, and got Jimmy to help me put the Christmas things in the attic. Then I went outdoors and stripped the yard of ornaments.
I signed and stamped my second batch of holiday cards. I had ordered some with the New Year’s theme, knowing I’d never make a Christmas deadline. I bought some Taza chocolates and Effie’s oatcakes, local products to send to friends in Germany and son Eli in Burlington, VT.
This morning, I mailed the cards and packages. New postal clerk in Brookline Village: very friendly and efficient.
I declare Christmas officially done. It’s been a long month.
What will I do differently next year? It was fun having dinner at our house; I would cook again, and perhaps the same meal. But the whole presents scheme must change. Next year, it will be quality over quantity. I ended up returning a lot of the gifts bought for the teenaged Gutermans and giving them cash to buy what they want. In the future, I will (a) not shop at TJ Maxx and Marshall’s, which I love and they seem to hate, and (b) buy one special gift, fill the stockings, and give the rest in cash.
I will send holiday cards again. I haven’t done that in years, and I enjoyed the opportunity to reminisce about my cousins and childhood family friends and simply write by (private) hand and not via social (and public) media. At my sister Sally’s suggestion, I made a file with all the addresses in it, so that will be streamlined next year. I even added a few names of people I intend to send cards to next year; this year I ran out.
Here’s the New Year’s card photo, taken August 2012:
Also, now that the big push of Christmas is behind me and the choke points of the semester still to come, I am going to attempt to blog much more frequently, even if most of the offerings are slight. The accumulation of a lot of small gestures may add up.
It’s a new year and time for new experiments.
In my New Year’s resolutions, I am taking my cue from MIT friend/colleague Jessie, who frames hers this way:
I try to look at what I have wanted, but allowed myself to be distracted from; what I have enjoyed, but not prioritized; what I need, but haven’t chosen.
I’m good on tasks and short-term goals, and I get them done. In the next few days I want to finish a full draft of a project I’m collaborating on, and I will do it. In the next three months I am taking a skating test (February 3rd) and going to AWP in Boston (March 6 – 9), and I will be ready for them. I have formulated a plan for getting the tasks done that help meet the goals.
But thinking and dreaming aspirationally? Perhaps I could dream bigger, and less specifically, for my resolutions. I know I can get stuff done — can I focus, enjoy, and get what I need?
In that spirit, here are my three resolutions for 2013.
My resolutions are usually about aiming for personal goals or eliminating personal deficits.
What if our resolutions were more focused on our interactions with others, not as a way to get but to give?
The writer David Rakoff (b. 1964) died in 2012 from cancer. In its year-end feature on notable deaths of the year, “The Lives They Lived,” the New York Times Sunday Magazine published a letter that Rakoff’s friend Ariel Kaminer had written, thanking him for important lessons. They are ones to live by:
Read the full version of the letter, and a fuller description of each axiom, here: link.
P.S. Of course I still have a personal resolution or two and will publish them later.
leaf stitch word 