Goodbye 2015, and, I suppose...resolutions

BLOT: (01 Jan 2016 - 01:12:19 PM)

Goodbye 2015, and, I suppose...resolutions

It is weird thinking back to 2015. I do not remember it, not as an entire unit. My memories prior to about August are very fuzzy. I know I went to a conference (ALLA/SELA) and talked about copyright. I remember giving talks about science reporting, and copyright, and "Welcome to the Future History of the Book." I remember some work stuff, playing some games, reading some books. But it is fuzzy. Dreamlike, almost. And it feels years ago. I much better recall the past four or five months, but even that is through a filter of time dilation and imprecise order. I remember making a trip to Boston + Salem + Providence + a scattering of other cities, which was the event-highlight of the year, but that feels like nearly a year ago. I remember making new friends, but the way it played out is strange in my head. This is all to say that I recall 2015, but it feels like a moment of imprecise time.

Window with blinds partially open, looking out into a gray day

There were good moments in 2015. I started writing again. Despite some ups and downs, I managed to complete at least a dozen poems worthy of publication, and have three or four stories so near worthy of publication that I will start trying to get them a home as soon as I can finish polishing them. As for the poetry, that gives me enough poems to start seriously considering publishing a collection, and I plan very early in the year to put on a show...somewhere.

As said, I got to go on a trip to New England around Halloween, and that is a highlight. Not only did I get to spend time with Jason and Katie Sharitt for the first time since last October, but I got to see most of the major cities of the United States: Atlanta, Washington D.C., Baltimore, New York, Boston, Providence. I got to spend the day before Halloween in Salem, which was a fairly crazy time, very busy and full of people in costume. I got to go into one of the oldest museums in the country and just have down time. I got to see Boston's Chinatown. I got to visit Little Italy. I got to hang out in an upscale hookah bar, to visit a neighborhood tea shop, and to hang out in a bookstore dedicated to Lovecraft. I got to walk up and down the street where Lovecraft was born, and visit his grave. There were so many moments that had this "slice of life" characteristic that it would be hard to give name or description to them all, but it was nice. Even the ridiculously long train trip had the flavor of a life event.

The most surreal moment of that whole trip was me on my little starter Android phone (I've upgraded since then) using a blue tooth keyboard and a very crappy 3G connection to try and help a friend, at 1am, brainstorm a paper about Emily Dickinson while in a cramped little train bed heading through a very dark South and North Carolina. Ah, the future is here.

The most significant event of the year, and one I have not talked about much, was I started therapy back in August (well, September before I started it properly, but August was the first initial visits). Towards the end of July, and the start of August, I finally dealt head on with some (or all) of the issues related to my younger brother's 2014 death. It is a little more complicated than that. Just the act of getting back into writing (for the first time since 2013-2014) meant I had to spend several hours a day dealing with emotions, plotting, things of that sort. That dredged up some stuff. I started hanging out with people for the first time in a bit, which most of my friends probably note since I had been scarce for several months (and even around October 2014's The Stars are Right, I was in such an obvious-in-retrospect funk that I'm sure someone had to notice). Around the end of July, start of August, I hit what I would call a manic couple of weeks. Afterwards, I was tired and drained like I have never been before in my life. I made essentially two blog posts hinting at it, one about an I Ching casting, and and one where I gave advice to my younger self. You would have to read between the lines to see me talking about my exhaustion, there. Well, maybe not in the I Ching post, but there you go.

Therapy has gone well. I have not had to get on any anti-depressants. I have started talking about grief vs guilt vs trying to avoid emotions. The last couple of sessions have been mostly about self-identifying behaviors, but it is obviously winding down. I have a couple of more sessions scheduled, and then probably a couple of more sessions past that, but I think that will be it. I've fixed a lot about myself this past few months, mostly in the sense that I have done quite a few personal inventories where I have at least acknowledge bad habits and built up a few good ones in their place. I will not pretend like I am magically fixed for the duration, but I have a much better vocabulary for dealing with things.

Since my manic weeks followed by exhausted weeks, though, a lot of things have derailed. I have not read very much. I have not watched many movies. I have not played many games. I have had a few projects in the fire, but the heat has not gotten very loud. One of the sadder losses was that the writings I had worked pretty hard to get ready to go took a backseat to just trying to feel ok about the day. All of these things I need to work better at getting back. I lost enough weight that people began to notice. I need to take advantage of this and keep up some of the healthier habits while not doing it for the wrong reason.

My brain rewiring about that time is partially why the year is so fuzzy, why time has dilated for me, days have become weeks. Weeks have become months. Months have become...some indefinite period of time longer than a month. It is not all bad. When people tell me things like, "The year has just flown by!," I get to experience time at a slower rate than most. As a person in my late 30s, when years tend to rush together, it has actually been nice to just experience one, experience it fully, even if it was not the best year of my life.

In this light, my resolutions are simple. I had none for 2015. I had only a few scant ones for 2014. I had way too many for 2013. I'd like to start with basics. Here you go...