Reflective, hopeful, content. 01/08/03
So here it is, 2003. Eight days into the new year and it has started to sink in that 2002 is over. Dec. 31st we went to see a band called "The Other Ones". Didn't really feel like a New Year's Eve celebration. It was kind of an afterthought. "Hey! This is a cool show! That guitarist is smokin'! Oh yeah, Happy New Year, by the way!" I had a good time, the Grateful Dead is not one of my favorite groups but there are a few songs I really like and I got to hear them played live, loud and long that night. It was a four hour show, I would have been fine with only two hours myself, but Steve and I were there with his brother and his brother's friends, all diehard Deadheads. I smoked more pot that night than I usually do in a week.
Do I have any New Year's resolutions? Not really. I am the sort who is always making resolutions to myself. All year long. I say things like "I'm going to practice dancing every night this week." "By the end of summer I'll have a new job." "No more going days without eating." Do I follow through with these goals, these declarations of change? Hell no. And I feel despondent when I have succumbed to my lazy, procrastinating ways, as if I've betrayed my true desires by not achieving EVERYTHING I decide (often impulsively) to do. So I need less resolutions, not new ones for the new year. I need to be easier on myself.
Well. To look back over the past year, what was 2002? It was not unlike every year since '95, when I moved to this town, started living with Steve, got this job, started hanging out with our core group of friends. The houses we live in, the cars we drive, the amount of our involvement in the SCA changes often. People move away, come back. Our income goes up and down. But most years since that huge turning point 8 years ago just blend together. Was it '99 when we moved to our current house? How long has Bailey cat lived with us? The amount of time passing and the dates of events are so hard for me to pin down. But here are a few things I'm pretty sure happened in 2002:
I have started coming home during my lunch hour sometimes so Steve and I can be together during the middle of the day when we both are awake and energetic. A better time for lovemaking or intelligent conversation. Sometimes we even eat lunch together.
A significant realization I had this year was that I'd been losing weight, gaining it back, losing it again, over and over, for 13 years. Fits of mad will power and determination to exercise, followed by giving in to my slow metabolism and constant craving for food. But in March I knew that I didn't want to spend the rest of my life with disordered eating patterns and clothing in 12 different sizes. By July I had gotten my weight to the point where I was happy with how I looked and since then have managed to stay in the same weight range. Quite an accomplishment, for me.
In the middle of 2002 Steve became unemployed. For six months I've been going to work while he has the day free to sleep in, hang out with friends, take a college class, work on projects around the house, go out for coffee or see a matinee, do some shopping. Ah, how I envy him this freedom! The changes to our income and our schedule have changed both of our lifestyles. It has been a frugal year, times of indulgence will stand out more in my memory because they have been fewer and so more significant to me. Neither of us is in a hurry for him to get a job, if it were me being unemployed I would take it as a well-deserved break.
2002 was also a year of travel, of seeing other parts of the USA than those we always drive to for SCA events. Now, I've gone down to rural Missouri by airplane, and across the country's highways to Kentucky. I was reading previous journal entries today. I never wrote here about the Kentucky trip. I guess I felt like I had because I'd described it to my Dad in a recent letter. I write to him in a style similar to these journal postings, maybe for the next entry here I will include excerpts from my letter to him. What else to say about the past year... I think I grew up a little. Learned not to take things for granted, figured out that my sense of well-being is not dependent on financial stability or abstract ideas of what I should be or look like. I am learning to "don't worry, be happy" more. I dance when I feel like it, do artwork when I'm in a creative mood, I write when I have something to say. I relax more now. So now, looking out at the clear starry sky of a warm January night, I think I am in a good place to start the New Year.
