A new year really is nothing to be taken lightly, and yet, it is the exact sort of thing a person should take lightly.
It is, by definition, a milestone. As a matter of fact, let’s take a look at that word:
noun: milestone; plural noun: milestones
1.
a stone set up beside a road to mark the distance in miles to a particular place.
2.
an action or event marking a significant change or stage in development.
(I have a strong distaste for when people use dictionary definitions like this, probably because I started most of my high school essays that way, but, moving on, because I’ve done it.)
On second thought, is a New Year an Event marking a Significant Change? I’d say that changing a digit in the year is a significant sort of change. I don’t know that I’d agree that a New Year marks a significant change in development, however. Time is, after all, a rather arbitrary factor when it comes to development. Or, is it?
We can choose to look at time passing as us, say, dying, I suppose. Or, we can choose to look at time passing, years dropping, not as random, per se, but as conventional wisdom, i.e.: a preservation of the status quo.
New Years’ Resolutions are certainly that though, aren’t they? A way in for places like gyms and cook book publishers to exploit our obsession with—our dutiful internalization of—both the status quo and the clean slate.
The way I’m looking at it, this year, which is precisely how I chose to see it when the clock struck midnight, and I didn’t choke up or get all nostalgic or feel much of anything really, which is what I have done nearly my whole life prior, is that I came to the sort of brutal conclusion that a lot of my life is set.
And I think I’m finally good with that.
I can throw things up in the air: apply to graduate school at thirty, delete the Facebook app from my iPhone, log out of Instagram, and implore myself to be a stronger, much less lazy individual. I can do those things, and one of those things might even stick, but who am I to demand resoluteness at this stage in the game?
What I do know is that I started 2014 as a better writer. I spent the tail end of 2013 revising a story to life and reading more than I’ve ever read, and something, by golly, came of that. I engaged in a process and emerged the victor. That’s good for me. Of course, I’d like to get even better and read even more, but that’s just the next step in what I’ve committed myself to and should ideally come somewhat naturally, if I permit it.
I would still like to engage in the process of becoming a better mother; one who’s not constantly battered down by, dependent on, and at the mercy of technology.
I’d love to engage in the betterment of my physical self. I’d like to eat better despite this newfound dependence on the nutritional barrenness of the Midwest. I’d like to engage with other humans. I’d even like to shower more.
More aptly even, I’d like to refresh The Long Bonds into something that expects less, something that is more realistic, and something that is even a bit uglier. I’d like for The Long Bonds to become a conduit for all aspects of my life, not just the ones that depict a grateful and contented mother, but those other ones too that document a whole woman. This is, by definition, the story of The Long Bonds of one woman’s life, and I’d like it to start looking like that.
I started this blog as a new mother, an unhappily working mother, who pined for her child, constantly, and who was also luxuriating in the newfound creativity this planted within her. In that year or so, I started this blog and blogged often, I wrote and published a short story, I secured a paid freelance opportunity—I am not afraid to say that it was in this vibrant life moment that I became: a writer.
I owe a lot to that woman who took what she had been given and blazed a path for herself. I owe her my life. So, in honor of her, I’m breathing new life into this space. For 2014, The Long Bonds is a place for me to either stop in briefly, eloquently, sloppily, or maybe in a flash—an image, a moving picture—a slab of fiction, a poem, or someone else’s song. I’m struck daily, I think we all are, and since I have this beautiful, dirty slate to share it, I’m going to do just that.
Happy 2014, no matter how you cut it.
