Second day’s end to a new year, I’ve yet to make a resolution. Is it laziness? Indifference? Is it necessary?
I sit on the porch smoking what’s left of a cigar from yesterday. I’m frugal, and sitting on porch in the winter cool and moisture, it burns better today than day before. Like me, it just needs a little time outside to get back to good.
Inside, boys play pretend war and police, urban clearance into bedrooms and stairwells. I’ve lived my fun—and my nots—and I’m happy to leave them to their boyhood heroisms before living it for what it is—but I hope they never have to.
What do I want to achieve this year? What do I want to do?
Maybe I use the wrong verb. Not “want,” what l “will” I do? What “will” I achieve?
Whatever it is, whatever they are, writing (unless a finished work) is not the answer (and if it is, I should be writing “it” and not this—in time).
How have I spent the first two days?
I tuned a bike I received for my birthday. I haven’t had one for years, but last summer I rode with my son on a trail at the edge of our town and loved it. I’d like to do longer rides—see and cover more country than my legs alone will make, maybe camp and see sections of state from a trail and not rode—wind and whir of chain and wheels my music, not radio and the same few popular-hammered songs.
I started a wood project for my wife—a bedstand for the side where she sleeps. I have another project to make for my sons. I WILL finish these. These are goals defined and measured in quality of a corporeal finished project made of hands and spirit.
I want to make things, fun things, cool things—then give them away for others to enjoy, however that may be and mean to them.
I want to grow a better garden, keep learning, spend less on summer greens and reds and begin to learn forgotten (or never-learned by me) ways to preserve and enjoy what I raise later into the year.
I like working with my hands. I like working with my mind. I think far more than I do. This year, I will do better at the actual “doing.”
I’ve been reading posts (I’m always reading) about others searching for audiobooks to make use of time when they are in transition and travel between life destinations and demands. I want to speak what I write, share and expand my words in new medium and inclusion of a voice.
Do you ever think it interesting, how badly writers desire to be “heard,” but never speak—mostly writing on and mostly to themselves. To be heard, don’t we have to give voice to our words and thoughts. If not us, then who?
I will speak. I will share. Besides, if writing is mostly conversation with an audience—whoever it may be that comes across and, by ever greater fortune of chance, even enjoy—why not share our sound and add new dimension to the personal.
This is a goal, attainable and measurable by an end product of follow-through in doing. I will do.
My cigar’s burnt out again. I got caught up in a thought. There are worse things, and maybe smoking is one; but for all I work on and seek to improve, I believe we need our imperfections, our vices others judge outright or in passive observance if for no other reason than to be daily reminded: there is always more to improve. This keeps us growing, living, expanding in this miracle of life experience.
Maybe that’s another goal—to keep growing, expanding, being present in all life blesses me to sense. How to quantify this—I do not know.
Some works, and maybe the greatest, are purely qualitative in measure. For this, we have to see their beauty, experience and be witness to their Wonder—however they live and show to us.
This is another goal: to stay witness t the wonder and beauty when life seems only race or killing time. I want to rest and pause and be present to the Wonders that whisper, far more than scream, when we slow and still and hold presence to see: like a cigar and a thought and reflection and rest—the moment I live now.