Resolved 2011

Hey there! I have not posted for almost 8 months, but I have not been idle. First of all, I logged plenty of quality time on Facebook and Twitter, where I have 411 and 146 potential readers respectively. Here my potential readers are infinite but my actual readers (let alone commenters) are few, and what can I say? I'm a girl who likes feedback.

I also did some stuff. I have discarded many, many boxes full of stuff we did not need, but you still can't tell by looking at my house. Stuff flows back into it like the sea flows into a hole dug at the water's edge.

I cooked a lot of dinners and played with my baby and fed my baby and rocked my baby and pushed my baby in the stroller, and he is no longer a baby but a two-year-old.

I finished a triathlon! And that's pretty much what I did. I got up one morning and performed two straight hours of pretty intense aerobic activity. I did not train for a triathlon, I did not lose 20 pounds training for a triathlon (although, disgusted with myself, I did manage to lose almost 20 pounds afterward), I did not set and make a particular time goal. I discovered that I like splashing about in the ocean but not swimming, and I like riding my bike very slowly with groceries in the saddlebags. I like running. I don't plan to do any more triathlons.

I was talking to an old friend about my vague disappointment with the experience, and I hit on a précis: "I wanted it to be a project," I mused, "and it turned out to be just an accomplishment." "Story of my life," he observed, and it sort of is mine too. I like to do things I am good at right away. And while I was 66% horrified by this recent Wall Street Journal piece, Amy Chua is right on when she says "...nothing is fun until you're good at it. To get good at anything you have to work..." I want to learn to work.

So my word of intention for this year is

Project

--the noun, although I am working on a way to make the verb relevant too, because I'm like that about words and unity and so on. I am going to try to frame tasks as project and process. Some of my projects will be easy and fun--like listening to one album a day from our vast and somewhat neglected collection--and some will be more challenging, like writing that second novel. And I am about to announce a project in which I hope some people will join me online, but that is another post.

I can't claim that I had any success with "listen and love without fear" or "embrace," so I will continue to--well, work--on those words of intention too.