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I have been much distracted this past week with preparing for the class I taught on Friday. I was teaching a newer presentation, one I’d only given a couple of times, instead of one I’ve given dozens of times over many years. The fact that it was about finding a good creative balance with Social Media (a nebulous topic with an ever-changing landscape) added difficulty to the endeavor. Which is how I found myself feeling some social media and promotional burnout while trying to drum up enough interest that I’d have more than a single registrant in the class. In the end most of the people who attended fell into the “friends and family” category, which was nicely illustrative when I had to answer the question “How do you get the word out?” Answer: start with the network you have and be patient when it feels like your efforts aren’t expanding beyond that. Because even the friends and family who showed up did so not because of relational obligation, they showed up because I had something to teach which was useful to them. I have to say that last bit out loud to push back against the social anxiety in my head which would have me disbelieve my own value.

This weekend I am supposed to relax. Rest my mind from preparing for class, promoting the class, and anything else related to the class. My mind does not rest easily. Ever. It constantly gathers information, evaluates, makes connections with other information, and then moves onward to gather even more. This is one of the reasons that social media like Twitter are woven into my life. It is a constant flow of information, and most of the tidbits are markers to deep wells of science, theology, history, etc. I dive down so many rabbit holes. But I was supposed to be resting, not collecting new information and processing it for the next time I teach about social media, nor gathering pieces for the presentation on networking and social anxiety next month. I’m supposed to be resting. One of the only ways I can get my brain to hold still and shut up is to feed it a flow of story. But it can’t be a new story because there are things to react to and process in a new story. Instead I pick a show I’ve watched before and turn it on to keep my brain occupied while my hands and body are doing something like crochet or dishes. This is not what most people picture when they think of taking a rest day.

One of the problems I’m having with resting right now is that I’m not physically active enough. With the exception of driving for a few necessary errands, my life is bounded by the walls of my house. In the winter I barely even step outside into the yard. I need to change that for all sorts of mental and physical health reasons, yet somehow the addition of cold amplifies all the other small obstacles to going out. In the winter I have to put on a coat and brace for cold instead of just stepping outside the door. The obstacle exists even if it feels stupid. When I can get myself outside and involved in a physical project, my brain will shut up some. This is why I’m looking to next week and hoping that the weather will cooperate enough for me to attack some vines with pruning shears. I have friends who want grape cuttings. And I have gardening plans around building better structures for my vines to climb. I look out my windows and think “I really ought to get started on that” but then fail to put on shoes or coat.

In my preparations for talking about social media, I looked through resources on ADHD. Any time I do, some of the behaviors and issues sound so familiar to me. I’ve just spent three paragraphs describing my brain as a noisy place that won’t rest and seeks constant input. Yet I don’t have ADHD. I live with people who do. I have many friends who do. I resonate with their energy and some of their adaptive solutions also work really well for me, yet the list of ADHD traits I don’t have is longer than the list I do. Some other descriptor is a better fit for how my brain works. Even though I was supposed to be resting, I ended up in a rabbit hole of TED talks. I listened to Jessica McCabe talk about what it is like to live with ADHD. It is a good talk and at the end of it I thought “I’m so glad that exists as a reference.” Then I clicked to another talk and listened to Jordan Raskopoulos talk about living with high functioning anxiety and thought “Everything she says is about me.” So I guess I found a better descriptor for how my brain works. Another click led me to Dawn Heubner talking about facing fear which had me making all sorts of notes for next months presentation. All those rabbit holes are full of really amazing stuff, they just aren’t restful.

Sometimes a thing that helps my brain to slow down and rest is if I let it dump all the thoughts into words. Pin all the loose ideas down into sentences and paragraphs. Something about that process makes my mind able to let go of the thoughts. They’ve been saved and won’t be lost. Which is why you’ve just read this exceedingly rambly post about all the things in my head while I’m trying to have a restful weekend.

A year ago I wrote a post about Befriending Slowness. When I wrote it, I did not know that the whole world was only a month away from slamming on the brakes. I knew that 2020 was going to be transformative for my family because I knew that we were going to end the daily comic around which all our lives had been shaped for twenty years. The eight months preceding my post on slowness were ones of frantic home disaster recovery and wedding planning. It was already a sharp contrast. Then the pandemic slowed everyone down. Then the end of the comic changed the core premises of our household.

I remember a moment last spring, I think it was in April or May, when I was sitting outside in my hammock and feeling as if the constraints imposed by the pandemic were like a cocoon, and important constriction which made transformation possible. Part of me wanted the constraints to stay in place long enough to teach me how to move through the world differently. At the same time I was mourning the opportunities snatched away from my young adults. They had just begun to climb out of their pits of depression when pandemic snatched away their ladders and slapped a lid on top of us all. It was the work of months to shift that pit trap into a greenhouse where we could all grow in new ways.

In December I had no interest in doing year-in-review activities. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that they’re starting to tug at me now as we approach the anniversary of when pandemic changed everything. The onset of the pandemic has a much bigger footprint on my life in the past year than the shift from one calendar year to the next. Which brings me back to where I started this post. My life no longer feels slow. My kids no longer feel trapped in pits of depression. We move through our lives at a slower, more deliberate pace, than the frantic energy we felt before, but we are moving. It feels good to be moving forward.

“I really miss travel.” Howard said. We were watching a show set in Australia where the protagonist lives on his sailboat. There were lots of long shots of ocean and countryside. We then had a conversation about the trips we would like to take, places we would go, people we’d like to see. It was a happy sad conversation. February frequently triggers wanderlust for me. This year more than ever.

Tis the season of Zoom meetings where people are trying to decide what is reasonable to expect from this year. Conference staff trying to decide whether vaccination rates will allow for an in-person event in the Fall. My family wondering if we can gather for a family reunion in June. These conversations are fraught. I doubt any of these events will be able to occur this year, and yet I know that sometimes people need to cling to the hope that by September things will be better. One person needs the be reassured that people are acting safely, another desperately needs to believe that “safe” includes seeing people in person this year. It can be hard to respectfully navigate the feelings while making choices about how to proceed.

I find myself in a strange place. I’ve found a pocket of creativity and peace inside my current restrictions. My home is a greenhouse where the people inside are growing in a sheltered environment. I’m so glad to see the growth (after years of withering and stagnation) that part of me is content to keep the greenhouse locked down tight for a while longer. Staying contained will get easier when the weather warms up enough to allow us to use the outdoor spaces that are attached to our home. At times I’m glad that all of the outside events where scraped off the schedule since we’ve grown in ways that wouldn’t otherwise have been possible.

Yet then I find myself quietly wiping away a couple of tears during a conversation about taking trips.

Just because I’m keeping my eye on what is right in front of me, doesn’t mean I don’t feel the loss of the far horizon. The loss of connections with people who are not of my household. That sense of community which comes from random small conversations. Sometimes we don’t notice what is missing in our lives until we trip over the gap, or until it comes back. My life right now is good, and I’m focused on dwelling in that good. Yet it will be lovely when the pandemic releases it’s stranglehold and more things become possible again.

I am 48 years old today. Thus I join the increasing ranks of people who have celebrated birthdays while under pandemic restrictions. I’m a late-comer to this particular life experience. By late March everyone will be in the club. As usual in my house, pandemic changes everything and not very much. We’ve always been pretty low-key with birthdays. They tend to be immediate household with a few gifts and some tasty food. Since we’ve been doing meal-prep kits as part of our groceries, I allowed myself to pick only recipes that appealed to me rather than weighing other people’s preferences. So I’ve got three birthday meals. The thing that is truly broken is that Howard generally likes to sneak out and purchase gifts and foods for me either the day before or the day of my birthday. Unfortunately he’s the one who we’re most trying to keep away from Covid exposures, so he can’t go shopping. Pre-planned online shopping simply doesn’t click in his brain the same way.

I keep staring at my age number and wondering how I feel about it. I can feel the years in my body and see them on my face. I have no desire to hide my accumulating years or attempt to turn back the clock. Not even on the days when I feel dismayed about the softening accumulation on my body. Forty-eight is a highly divisible number, which invites retrospection. Half my life ago I had just graduated from college and was chasing a toddler while thinking about having a second child. I’d had my first surgery for tumor removal and thought that adventure was behind me. We were living in our first house and trying to make a record production company work. A third of my life ago we were five years into Schlock Mercenary, six months into trying to make it be full time work, and about to make the decision to print the books ourselves. I was six years past my second surgery and radiation therapy, but hadn’t yet faced the emotional baggage of it all. We lived in the house we have now and had our four children. That half-my-life-ago 24 year old had no idea who she would become. That third-of-my-life-ago 32 year old had started walking the pathways which led to me.

The retrospection is interesting, but turning and looking forward is more so. If me of 24 years ago had no idea who she would become, how far will I go in the next 24 years? I feel strong and confident in ways that I didn’t feel even two years ago. For the first time in eight years no one in my house is in crisis or on the brink of crisis. I’ve learned how to claim space and set boundaries. I’m excited to see what I can become and create in the years to come. I have my plans for this year, now I just need to take small daily steps toward them.

Today it feels like the new year has finally begun. Yesterday we shook off the last traces of obligation to 2020, and now I am free to move forward into making this year different. Much of this feeling comes from the presidential inauguration yesterday. I have a sense of profound relief that Trump has been rendered irrelevant instead of being a hazard that I had to keep track of. The first moves of the incoming administration have been focused on increasing access (the white house website is available in Spanish again,) setting expectations for behavior (telling the attorney general’s office they work for the people, not the president. Telling staff that they’re expected to be polite and respectful or be fired,) and setting plans into motion to manage vaccine administration for the ongoing pandemic. For the first time in four years, I am pleased with the direction my government is aiming. I expect that I will not always be pleased in the four years that are coming. To paraphrase a quote I saw on twitter: I am looking forward to being frustrated and disappointed by my government instead of being horrified and mortified by it.

Yet the shift in governance isn’t the only source for my new year feeling. My youngest son passed his final GED exam. None of my kids are in school anymore. Instead of finishing up this final necessary thing, we can look forward to what we want to come next. Unfortunately for him, the very next thing is getting his wisdom teeth removed. But after that, he can look around at options and decide what he wants his life to be. We have a list of short term projects: learning some video editing so that he can be a better-paid skilled assistant for our family business, learning about computer components so that he can build a new machine for himself, continuing driving practice to get his license. Medium term might include getting a out-of-the-house job once warm weather and vaccinations reduce pandemic risks. Long term, no one knows. That’s all fuzzy with too many variables to decipher. We don’t need to try to bring it into focus for now.

It is really nice to see my two youngest starting to grow and plan their lives. I don’t think it is a coincidence that most of the growth started happening in early November, right after the election demonstrated that maybe the world wasn’t completely doomed. I’m excited that they’re in an emotional state where I can start teaching them real-world assistant skills that could translate to jobs where their mom is not their employer. Because I can teach them these skills, more things become possible for me. I’m able to teach classes and host online social events because I know I’ll have help.

A third thing that is making the year feel new, is that I gave the final approval to print on the Big Dumb Objects book project. This book has been something of an albatross for almost two years. We had to scrap and re-do the bonus story twice. The Kickstarter for it was delayed by the massive expenses and disruption of our 2019 plumbing disaster and related home renovations. Then fulfilling the Kickstarter was disrupted by Howard’s health crashing and the pandemic. Slowly we managed to find our footing. Now the book is done. The next time we have to think about it will be when the shipments of books arrive and I need to mail several thousand packages. That is familiar work for which I’ll have two skilled assistants.

I taught a class and it worked. I finished a draft for a personally impactful essay. I’ve got a short story in process. I’ve got a research projects to find agents who rep middle grade and picture books. I’ve got plans for building community and connecting with other creatives. I’ve set myself some creative goals. I’ve even told myself firmly that I need to settle into these new obligations before saying yes to any other things I decide I want to do.

The year feels new, and that means it is time to get to work.

Early in my daughter’s senior year of high school she came home excitedly telling me about a group of friends who were planning a road trip to Disneyland after graduation. She was wondering if I would let her go. I pointed out to her that she was due to turn 18 in a couple of months, and that meant she could make her own decisions about things like road trips. If she could pay for it, she could give herself permission to go. “I can do that?” she asked, amazed. For a dozen reasons the trip did not actually happen, but I still remember that moment, seeing my daughter have a dawning realization of adulthood. That she could just give herself permission to do things and then do them.

Which is where I find myself today. I taught a class online to a group of fifteen people. It wasn’t part of a conference or other event. I just wanted to teach, so I set it up, solved the tech hurdles, announced my plan, and made it happen. Inside me there is a much younger version of me who is amazed that I just went ahead and did the thing, who has spent the last eight months asking “are you sure we can do this?” But I did do it, and people bought tickets. Then they came and asked good questions, shared interesting resources, and smiled or nodded as I taught. I gave myself permission to be an expert and people showed up and treated me like one.

I’m so glad I found the courage to make this thing happen, even though it felt scary. Even though my anxiety was a resisting force at every step. I got to teach a class today and I’m very glad it all worked. I feel energized and exhausted. I feel like I put something useful into the world and helped people along their own creative path. I feel like I made a good thing happen with only my own decision and determination. Now I’m going to go collapse and do something comfortable. Next week is soon enough to do another brave thing.

Most of the “letter” portions of my newsletter are focused on creativity or what is going on in my life. This one was different, because the past week was different. If you’re interested in subscribing to my monthly newsletter, you can do that here.

Dear Readers,

At the beginning of a new year I would like to be focused on my excitement for the projects I have planned, the classes I get to teach, ways I plan to move forward. I do talk about those things down in the Projects in Process section of this newsletter, but here in the letter itself my focus must be different this month. The recent riot at the US capitol building has reminded me of my responsibilities as a citizen. I join those who are calling for accountability for all the people whose words helped spark the riot and the people who physically did the damage.

Note that I say accountability rather than justice or punishment. I am choosing my words carefully in this letter so that they can carry my meaning precisely. I have been doing a lot of listening to friends who are prison abolitionists. I’m not fully on board with having no prisons at all, but they make some powerful points about accountability and restorative justice compared to simple justice/punishment models. Simply locking up a perpetrator may prevent imagined further harm, but it does not take steps to heal the damage which has already been done. My country needs accountability, restoration, and healing right now. Achieving that is far more complicated than merely imprisoning some people, though it definitely begins with taking power away from people who used their power to induce others to cause harm, and to prevent those who physically caused harm from doing more.

Power. This is a word and concept I have been considering a lot, particularly in the months since George Floyd’s death and my conscious commitment to anti-racism. It is so easy to feel powerless against national-scale events: pandemics, insurrection. On some level that is true. I am such a small pebble in the flowing river of my country. There is no way for me to change the course of the whole river, however when I focus my attention on the entire river, I miss seeing how much power I actually have. My pebble is tiny, but my learning about privilege has shown me that I do have some power over every molecule of water that I touch as it flows past. I can position myself to shelter those who need space to grow safe from heavy current. I can boost people and shore them up. I have a lot of power to influence the world that directly surrounds me and the people to whom I’m connected by social networks both online and in real life.

Learning to recognize my power comes slowly and counter-intuitively for me. I’m mired in social norms that teach women to stay behind the scenes, keep everything running, but don’t seek attention. Yet behind-the-scenes people who keep things running have enormous power. They are the ones who maintain status quo, or choose to disrupt it. This is where accountability comes in. On a national scale we have to look at the people whose decisions supported and empowered people who then decided to breach the capitol building to try to change the outcome of an election. What decisions gave that movement space to grow? This question must be asked of elected officials, tech companies, judges, and private citizens. With a follow up question of: what are you going to do differently going forward to prevent this from happening again?

The thing about accountability is that it has to apply to all levels of power, even my tiny pebble level. We may all be pebbles, but we all participated in the sequence of events that let up to the deaths of five people and the riot at the capitol building. We are all accountable for the things we say, the memes we share, the “jokes” we let pass unchallenged, the times we didn’t speak up because we didn’t want to upset anyone. We must each examine how we move through the world and ask ourselves if our small daily choices are really consistent with who we want to be. If we want to be healers, we must put in the work to heal. If we want to be anti-racist we must make ourselves and others uncomfortable by pointing out systems that keep us all mired in racism. If we want to be inclusive, we must actively look to see who is missing from our spaces and do the work to invite them in and empower them. Accountability work is hard and it never ends. We will have periods in our lives where we need to rest from pushing ourselves to be better, but after we rest we must pick up and work at it again. Particularly those who inhabit positions of privilege, which is almost all of us in one way or another. (Most people also inhabit places of disadvantage simultaneously with their priviledge. The one doesn’t cancel out the other, nor does it negate our responsibility to be accountable for our power. But that is an additional essay.)

As I watch the aftermath of the riots unfold, I have to remind myself that no amount of doomscrolling will give me a control rod on national-level events. However holding myself accountable does give me power. I must seriously consider how I affect the things and people I can touch. In my case, I’m going to stay politically engaged and communicate with my elected officials about my opinions. I will continue my personal anti-racism education. I will be more willing to speak my thoughts about the world at large, even when (or perhaps especially when) I think those thoughts will bring criticism. I will work on speaking up against the small incidents because challenging bad behavior on a micro-level is actually a kindness to everyone. It allows people to correct their bad behavior without there needing to be An Incident. Incidents create hurt and defensiveness which leads people to entrench in bad behavior. I’m more likely to choose the “pull person aside and discuss behavior” route than the “public confrontation” route, but I also need to be willing to deploy public confrontation if it is called for. I’m sure as I go forward I will find additional ways I can be better as I move through the world. And on that thought I want to borrow the words of Maya Angelou:

“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

I hope whether you’re a US resident contemplating the current mess, or a resident elsewhere seeing it from afar, you use this opportunity to recognize the power you do have to make the world a better place, and that you choose to use that power wisely.

All the best,

Sandra

I wish I could say I was surprised by the rioting and insurrection in my nation’s capitol yesterday. But I am not. Everything that happened was consistent with behavior I’ve seen from individuals and groups over the past several years. I feel many things today. Surprised is not one of them. I feel empathy and frustration for those who are shocked/surprised. It is hard to have your worldview shaken, but also, weren’t you paying attention? Or listening to people who have been predicting outcomes like this since 2016? Then I have to turn consideration toward myself and my own actions. Was there more that I should have done that would have helped others see this coming? I’m such a small pebble in this social flow, I doubt I could have changed the course of the river. Also, we would then be in the pandemic problem. A disaster averted leaves a sizable portion of population disbelieving that there was any reason to be concerned at all.

Today I’m still a tiny pebble. I’ve got friends online who are predicting that things are going to get worse before it gets better. I hope not. I want this to be the moment that the vast majority of conservatives wakes up and shakes off all the trappings of Trumpism. I want conservatives to lead the charge in removing Trump from power. I’m happy to see that Facebook has decided that Trump doesn’t get to speak on their platform until after inauguration day, and maybe not ever. Take away the man’s microphone. Take away his legitimacy. Yes that creates a new set of problems as those who support him will find ways to congeal and will likely learn how to organize and be more effective. We could end up with an ongoing domestic terrorist problem. That is better than another full coup attempt.

I’m not sure what true accountability looks like for yesterday’s actions and for all the choices that led up to yesterday’s events. But accountability needs to go deeper than simple punishment. It needs to last longer and be more transformative. Each of us needs to search our hearts and decide what accountability we have to democracy, community, to our neighbors. I was not in Washington DC yesterday and committed no crimes, but I can still be a better and more vocal citizen to help build a society that I want to live in.

It can be as simple as paying attention to the words we use to describe yesterday’s events. Some news sources are talking about a protest of patriots gone awry. Others are using words like mob, riot, insurrection, and violence. In order to make people accountable, we need to use the hard words. The precise words. An insurrection is a violent uprising against an authority or government. Breaching the capitol building was an insurrection. A riot is a violent disturbance of the peace by a crowd. That word applies too. The fact that the body count was so low doesn’t change the application of those words.

Use the hard words. Confront the hard things. And somehow do those in a compassionate and educational way. This is my challenge for myself.

I’m planning some on launching some new projects this year, and I’m excited about them.

I’m teaching online classes. The first is only ten days away when I teach Structuring Life to Support Creativity. I’ve already got 7 people signed up, which is almost half of the seats in the class. I am excited to engage with fellow creative people and help them find ways forward in their lives. I’ve scheduled a second class for February, Creativity vs. Social Media which will explore how to protect our creative selves from the corrosive aspects of social media, while still being able to leverage it as a necessary promotional tool, as well as a tool for connecting with others. Once I’ve got the first class complete, I’ll consider what I’m teaching in March. My hope is to teach one class per month, I’ve already got a list of presentations I’ve given before, and ideas for things that I haven’t previously taught as well.

I’m developing my crochet skills. I’ve had basic level skills since I was taught by my mom at around age 5 or 6. However I never followed up that basic knowledge with any further learning. It is nice to have an area of focus and study that is very kinesthetic rather than word-based. Yes, I’m reading a book to learn the skills, but the practice is in the hands. I hope that I can make something wearable by the end of the year, a cardigan probably. I like wearing cardigans.

I’m producing the next two Schlock books. To be honest, I’d love to put out the last four Schlock books this year, but I’m focusing my attention on two for now. The idea is to run a Kickstarter featuring these books in either March or April. But I want all the bonus stories and cover work done before the Kickstarter launches, so those dates may push later. There are large portions of this work that is not in my control. I have to wait on Howard. So having the other projects is critical for me to not feel helpless in my life.

I want to write between 12-20 short stories. I’d like to be posting one story per month to my Patreon, and then spreading the word about that so that I gain patrons (and therefore readers and income.) I also want to send some of the stories out to other publications where they can have a broader readership and hopefully entice people to come to my Patreon for more stories. I’ve got a specific publication in mind that I want to have three submissions for by March when they open doors (and allow 3 submissions per writer.) I think this effort will stretch my mind in good ways.

I plan to progress on renovating our kitchen. We can start the process of taking out a wall this week. Then there are many pause points for us to consider how to proceed or for us to pause until we locate the necessary funding to pay for the next step.

I want to polish up a picture book and send it into the world seeking an agent for me. I realized that I’m currently sitting on three nearly-complete picture book drafts. I’d like to run another picture book Kickstarter, but the maximum number of books I’d put into that Kickstarter would be two. This leaves the third book kicking up its heels and waiting for years. It might as well spend its wait time in the To Read pile for agents. Because I’d love to have a hybrid aspect to my writing career to compliment the self publishing and teaching. In the mean time, I’m squirreling away funds to pay for art for the other two picture books because I need to pre-pay for art before running the Kickstarter.

I’m absolutely certain that the year will hold more projects than the ones I’ve listed here. New projects always show up and sometimes existing projects need to be set aside. Yet it is nice to feel the new year / new project energy for now.

I wanted to write a blog post yesterday to mark the new year and lay down some words to shape the year that is to come. Instead I find myself skittish, as if I could jinx the coming year by speaking unwisely. I spent New Years Eve of 2020 with a clog in my throat that would not clear. I spent the first day of 2020 in the emergency room getting a medical intervention for that clog. Compared to that, new year 2021 is measurably better, and yet I didn’t dare speak that thought until today, when New Years Day had passed without an ER visit. It appears that one of the effects of 2020 is an increase of superstition in my mind and heart. I wonder how long that effect will linger.

A year ago today I’d just had an ER trip and was anticipating having my throat scoped the next day. We were two weeks out from my daughter’s wedding and everything else in our lives was on hold while we managed that event. The wedding felt like the capstone of the prior year, as if we couldn’t move on to new things until that was complete. Perhaps that has carried over to this year where it feels like many events of 2020 haven’t fully drawn themselves to a close. The election still wrangles instead of being settled. The pandemic didn’t end just because we got hopeful video of medical personnel being vaccinated. It still feels like 2020 has the power to grab me and pull me back into the mire, so I step softly trying not to draw it’s attention.

I have to step softly, because for all the mire, I gained many good things from last year. I want to keep the way I feel more centered and less afraid. I want to continue making slow and steady progress on goals. I’ve liked having a reason to scour my schedule free from outside obligations except those that I deliberately choose. The pandemic granted me permission to do that in a way that I didn’t know how to allow myself before. I watched as my young adults first shrank into themselves, then slowly started growing like little seedlings tentatively unfurling leaves one at a time. I feel like I did less well managing to stay connected to my out-of-house daughter and son in law. The distance forced by pandemic would have been easier to navigate if we’d already had an established pattern for how we socialized with them living separately. But the pandemic arrived right on the heels of the wedding and muddled our adaptation.

I wonder when I will trust that the world won’t shift under our feet, forcing us to retreat again. At some point the growth will be strong and sturdy enough to withstand whatever weather life throws at it. For now, I still feel wary that some other slow-rolling catastrophe will require us all to adapt yet again. Even as I don’t want that, I also have a new confidence that we CAN adapt. We can stumble and regain our footing, change core tenets of our lives, and still move forward. We adapted to pandemic. We adapted to incessant political ridiculousness. We adapted to Howard having poor health and then to it being improved. We adapted to the end of the Schlock Mercenary comic which had been our primary income and thus forced family interactions to bend around the need for productivity. Change upon change upon change. Yet whenever I compare status of family members, projects, finances, household now to a year ago, things are almost universally better off. That should make 2020 count as a good year for us, except it didn’t feel so. And I very much want to step away from it, and for it not to keep leaking into 2021.

In 2017 I focused on growing my heart large enough to handle whatever came next. In 2018 I focused on being less afraid. In 2019 I took that a step further and told myself to be courageous. In 2020 I carried an image with me into the year of a cloak of peace that I could wear no matter what else went on. Each year I lost track of the intention within a few months, but each time at the end of the year I could look back and see how the setting of the intention shaped the path I wended through the year in question. I don’t yet have an intention or image for 2021. Perhaps it will arrive later, when I truly feel like I’ve left the old year behind, when the compression of the pandemic truly begins to lighten. Until then, I’m just going to keep my head down and try to make sure that I continue to build a pandemic existence I can be happy living inside for another whole year should that become necessary.