Photo taken by Dave sometime during the late afternoon on 1-1-2011.
2011 was a pretty good year for me. I took a huge risk and quit a job that was destroying my soul, draining my energy and causing my hair to fall out (and was soon after rewarded with a wonderful job I wouldn't have otherwise been able to take.) I proved to myself that I'm still capable of hustling up a living income doing things like selling old clothes. Although I had really bad anxiety for so much of the year, and I although I wish that my anxiety hadn't caused me to avoid doing things that probably would have been fun or good for me to do, I did manage to overcome my fear that having an acetylene tank in my house would be the death of me (wasn't,) that riding the bus would give me fleas, pink eye, scabies or bed bugs (didn't,) and I am (slowly) learning to silence the persistent inner-mantra that says I'm not good, or capable, or talented enough to succeed at what I try. I'm happy to have been able to surround myself with really good people; to have made new friends who I hope to know for a long time, and to have done a pretty good job at staying in touch with old friends who live far away. Almost everyone I care about from Colorado has come to visit me since I moved to Oregon two years ago and I am very grateful and lucky for it. Besides that, I'm grateful for my fat stacks of postcards and letters from some very dear people, and I'm grateful for Dave, more than I could coherently express here.
I don't really resolve to do anything differently. I'd like to read more (my friend Janine-In-Alaska has by now probably exceeded her goal of reading 100 books in 2011 and she's an inspiration for me to attempt the same, even if I set a number closer to 1/2 or 1/3rd of hers.) I'd also like to write more – despite receiving a degree concentrated in writing, and emphatic encouragement from my professors and thesis committee to pursue a career as a poet, I haven't put down anything of note in nearly two years. (My friend Daniel says this isn't the end of the world and I believe him, but it's still unnerving.) I would like to spend more time outdoors: in the woods, on the coast, near water, especially in summer. I want to return the favor of visiting new homes and cities of friends who have come to visit me, as well as visiting my grandparents, nearly all nonagenarians and for the most part, quite lucid. I'd like to see jewelry-making grow to be more profitable (there are some really cool plans in the works thanks to the help of Dave and my friend Megan.) I hope to get better at remembering when movies that I want to see are coming out and making the effort of going to see them in theaters, because watching on my 13" laptop screen can be a little underwhelming. I'd also like to give myself permission to buy Days of Heaven, Badlands, Hitchcock's Rebecca, Gilda, Last Year at Marienbad and Easy Rider on DVD so I can watch them whenever I feel sad or nostalgic and not have to walk all the way to Video Verite to rent them. That's about it.
