New Year's Hopes

Happy 2011, two-and-a-half weeks late! I hope this writing finds all its readers happy, healthy, and enjoying the new year so far. For my part, I’m relieved to FINALLY be moving back into a period of better health (fingers crossed). I came down with the COLD THAT WOULD NOT DIE in mid-December, and have only started to feel truly better in the last few days. Husband has also been ill and is in the hacking end-stages of an icky flu bug. It is hardly surprising that we both succumbed to illness after the holiday season that we had. Rehearsals and performances, always two reliable causes of late nights, were seemingly never-ending in December; it was a great season of music, but it was also completely exhausting. On Christmas Eve, Husband and I went out for a very nice meal, just the two of us, to celebrate not only the holiday itself, but the completion of all our musical obligations for the season. We did make music in church on Christmas Eve, but that was music for God and for ourselves, not for an audience (even though the assembled audience, aka the congregation, was very appreciative).

New Year’s resolutions? I don’t really do them. I’ve never really had much success when I’ve tried to do them, so I’ve mostly given up. But I can handle New Year’s hopes. I like the symbolism of the new year representing a clean slate, and I think this can be particularly helpful when the past year was a tough one. Our past year was a mixed bag. Two fantastically wonderful things happened: we bought our cute little townhouse, and we adopted Oreo. But it was also a frustrating year for me; it is difficult for me to feel adrift professionally. I have always worked doing something, and I spent much of this past year unemployed. I don’t like being the reason that we can’t eat out much and have to cut corners financially. I also don’t like having nowhere to go each day. I’m a perfectly dreadful housewife, and I’ve never wanted to be a housewife to begin with. People keep telling me how lucky I am to have all this free time, and to try to use the time to enjoy hobbies, work on household projects, etc. They are absolutely right, of course. So why does a part of me want to scream each time I hear someone say something like that? I guess I’m just no good at having free time. So I’m hoping that 2011 brings me opportunities to work for a living, and perhaps some directional sense for where I may be headed career-wise. If I can find something to do that makes me even half as happy as Husband’s work makes him, I’ll be doing wonderfully indeed.

Another 2011 hope: to write more. In general. Stories, poems (I don’t think I’ve written a poem since high school, and that is really sad), blog entries, journaling, whatever. I’ve gotten much too good at shoving the impulse to sit down and write to the bottom of the priority pile, and it needs a fighting chance to stay near the top. Over the holidays when I was at my parents’ house sorting through old papers, I came across a couple of journals from middle school. They were full of lots of silly (in retrospect, definitely not then!) adolescent angst, but they were also full of creative writing and drawings to accompany the writings. I had forgotten how much I used to write, and to draw. I would like to let that part of myself come back into the action of my life. So I hope to write more, and maybe even draw again if I can get over how unpracticed and horrible I will be at first!

And a final hope for 2011: to make a little more music that doesn’t involve singing. I’ve got singing covered. I do it every day…singing around the house, singing along to CDs, the i-Pod, the radio, singing at several choir rehearsals a week. But I used to play piano regularly. And we have a beautiful guitar that I would love to learn to play, yet somehow I just HAVEN’T. It won’t learn to play itself…I need to pick it up, figure out how it’s supposed to feel in my arms and my hands, and let it teach me its language (with some help from some good instructional books, and hopefully a few lessons down the road). I still remember the piano’s language and how to speak it, but my fingers have gotten very sluggish and clumsy with lack of practice. I miss being able to make music with the piano instead of just pounding notes on it. So I hope for some music making that doesn’t involve singing (in addition to lots of singing, of course) in 2011.

I hope that whatever hopes you have for 2011 will keep pestering you until you make them reality. And I hope the same for myself. Happy new year!