377 days, Blog #147 - 14 from 2014

I’ve already made a list of things I want to do in 2015.  Things I sort of started, stopped, and towards which I have re-fueled my determination since my birthday (the other arbitrary new year denotation on the calendar).  But I will take down my 2014 magazine of dates from the wall tomorrow and put up another.  And certainly within the bookends of January 1^st and today, 2014 did offer some things worth noting.  Here are 14 of them.

Things that happened:

1. I got a new job.  Technically, this began on December 30^th, but it is all rolled up in that first week of the year.  I was scared out of my mind for starting a new job after being in the same position for nearly eight years at a place where I had a certain amount of confidence and autonomy and routine that didn’t challenge me all that much any longer.  New people.  And yet a familiar setting to where I began a ‘professional’ career almost twenty years ago.  I still sit at a computer all the day long – but my work is more about dashboards and excel than databases.  No, this isn’t what I want to be doing for the rest of my life, but it is training me to think strategically and with an eye for all the moving parts of how to make art into a viable business.  I don’t have the quirkiness of JP any longer, but I do have the option 3 out of the 5 days of my work week to wander around pieces of art, to eat in a really tasty café, and to venture out into Worcester and enjoy the culture that is just as quirky and rich and diverse as anything I encountered in Boston.

2. I met Isaac.  My sister and her husband had a little boy, a chill guy compared with the zealous curiosity and enthusiasm of his older (by two years and a day) sisters.  It was definitely a highlight of the year seeing my dad, who has had daughters and grand-daughters (and even all female dogs) over the last thirty some years be able to hold his grandson.  

3. Actually, this was the year of the baby.  Especially in my family.  Two girls at the start of the year (although one was also technically in December – but I met her in July) and three boys within weeks of one another in June and July.  It definitely shaped a lot of the conversation at family gatherings this year and filled my Facebook feed with baby pictures.  I think it put into sharp focus the fact I am going to be one (if not the) cousin not adding to this generation – something that is difficult when all those conversations are about babies and how no one knows how it is to be happy until becoming a parent.  But that also forces into focus all the things that supply happiness (or don’t) in my life without a child of my own.  Like…

4. Writing.  I had much nobler intentions for what would be accomplished this year.  I can say I have a ‘complete’ manuscript.  But I did so little with it… and relatively little within this year to get to that point, I am not satisfied declaring it a major in the list of things that 2014 yielded.  However, I did discover something else in those haphazard attempts to rally myself through community.  The Worcester Writers Collaborative has been around for two and a half years now.  We are still finding our legs (and arms for that matter), but the true value of being a supportive network of writers really resonated with me this year.  We had write-ins at various locations in Worcester – coffee shops, restaurants, book stores, and a non-profit’s function room.  The best weren’t even the ones that yielded the highest word count.  The best were the evenings when we gathered with cups of coffee and shared our highs and lows and frustrations and triumphs in the pursuit of writing a novel, short story, poem, memoir, etc.  The willingness to believe in one another.  To give one another permission to try.  To fail.  To get back up again and try once more.  To give advice freely and honestly, but not discourage.  There is something in that… something with which I hope to do more but have yet to understand what.  Hopefully I will discover more of its potential in the months to come.

5. Theater.  I wasn’t in a play this year.  It’s kind of funny to think I’ve been on the stage in a play for each of the last three years… even though I don’t feel like I did a lot of theater in the last three years.  I went back to Barre Players, something about which I remain both enthusiastic and apprehensive.  I don’t like drama.  I like gossip and gossipy critics even less… and I find that I teeter on the edge of getting sucked into that stupidity in some conversations.  But I can also come back to this theater after years away and see what it offers to all its volunteers.  What it could still offer to them, to the town, and to the craft of theater on a local, budgeted (but that is its own challenge of creativity) level.  I very much enjoyed seeing the youth put on a musical this summer and found myself reliving all those summers of the late 90’s.  As I think about the friends I visit over the holidays and our history, I realize a lot of those friendships were born on the stage in those summers.  Theater really is a valuable thing… and it really isn’t just about the stage.

6. Speaking of theater, I tried a little bit harder to get out and see shows this year.  Okay… not as hard as I really ought.  But I did make an effort to continue to support friends with their endeavors even though I wasn’t in a show and just scratching someone else’s back in return for them buying a ticket to come see me.  I also determined that every time I go see a show that I will seek out the positive results of each cast and crew’s efforts and time.  Towards that end, I have sought three things I liked in each show, the reflection of which I was successful for a time posting here.  Anyway, here are a few highlights that current memory allows me to mention.  I saw WCLOC put on Rocky Horror, 11 years after a memorable production in Barre.  I went back to Hovey and saw my former techie cohort direct her first play, a quirky farce called Flemming: An American Thriller.  I saw How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying twice this year… which is odd because I really find it misogynous and dated and way too long for a musical… but they were both worthwhile.  And only one Shakespeare, I’m afraid – A Winter’s Tale.  Although, I did see Coriolanus and King Lear on National Theater Live… which wasn’t live, but close enough for me.

7. I bought a new car.  Well not brand new.  But new to me.  I did not plan for this to happen in 2014.  I was hoping to wait until the end of 2015.  But… whatever.  Now I have a very Star Trek-y dashboard and 50mpg.  I also spend a lot less time in this car than I did in Kermit. 

8. I don’t commute this year.  And while there is something very mundane in the transition from one reality that I didn’t mind so much while I was living it to this new set of circumstances, I am more than content to not go anywhere.  I was very much a homebody for much of the year.  It has started to get old as the year draws to a close… and I am fashioning a schedule for the start of 2015 that will shake off that comfort zone.  Rather reluctantly, I should add.  But that is not an excuse to not keep going.

9.  No year would be complete without supper club.  And while I’m sad my idea of Shakespeare themes wasn’t the remarkable success I envisioned, it did yield some really great potlucks – including a Renaissance Twelfth Night feast (where I made a meat pie from grinding the meat myself), a Roman banquet (with bread made out of ricotta that I have to make again), a meal of cheese, and the encore of pie (where I cooked a beef pot pie from my great-grandmother’s cookbook and learned once again the value of slow cooking at low heat in the oven).  This year I decided to ask all my guests a question at the table.  Typically the question is what have you done this week that is creative.  We listen to one another more now.  And there are less phones appearing (thank God).

Things I Learned:
I asked my dinner guests this question a couple weeks back.  I was appalled at my answer or lack of it.  I really hadn’t formulated any grand lesson of the year when I asked the question.  But after some mulling, I could tell you.  Hopefully the lesson will linger long enough to have impact and stay with me.

10. My political prejudice.  For almost a decade I lived in Newton, worked in JP, and spent weekly conversations on the phone with my mother discussing The Colbert Report.  I worked in a job that encouraged political discussion on topics around which a lot of ‘polite’ conversation dances awkwardly – race, poverty, homosexuality, violence, gun control.  Granted, I worked with a lot of like minded individuals.  Well… now my life is in Central Mass and while my family and friends are certainly still mostly aficionados of Stewart and Colbert, I find myself spending more time with people I disagree.  And I realize my assumptions about people based on those beliefs are very ass-like.  I like to think that means I take deeper breaths now.  I may be sharpening my response more… but I also am willing to see more of a dimension than one particular belief set.  It doesn’t change my beliefs.  But maybe the indirect lesson is that my beliefs are not contingent upon having someone else agree with me.  So I don’t feel the need to convert them or block them from my view because they make me squirm with a discomfort in my perspective.

11. That said, there is a point where you just have to tune some people out.  Because you can’t change them.  But I really don’t want to change anyone.  Mostly, I stop listening to people when they stop listening to me.  If it has been made clear that you are only waiting for me to draw breath and not actually listening to and reflecting on my perspective - as I like to think #9 has made me do more regularly – I am not going to waste my breath talking to you.  It really doesn’t do either of us any good and just fills the universe with bad energy.

12. I can write every day.  (Mostly.)  I’ve been pretty good about this blog thing.  But it requires some discipline.  The discipline isn’t a guarantee for quality, but it creates a pattern of behavior so when my imagination is in working order, I have easy access to using it as opposed to squandering it with the thought I’ll come back to it later.  It really is one of the most important steps of being a writer… of being a successful writer.  Anyone can say they know how to write well.  But not everyone will make an effort to actually do the thing.

13. You really never know how much something you say can help someone.  I suppose the reverse is true as well – in fact I know that.  But mercifully the universe revealed the more positive end of that spectrum for me on a couple occasions.  It really proved to me how very powerful our words (and thoughts) can be.  And how the good can reflect itself back to you.

14. I don’t want to do what I’m doing for a job for the rest of my life.  Not even the rest of the decade.  I enjoy art – but not the disconnect from the real world of museums.  I realized through recent events that I would much prefer being out in that real world using art as a catalyst, not as an inanimate object on a pedestal demanding adoration.  I think that is one step closer to me figuring out what I want to be when I grow up – or when I grow up into my forties.