A Few Agenda Items for the Year of Bravery

Me as a lobster

My friend Kae has a tradition she takes part in with some old friends of hers, where every year they choose a word, one word, to describe the past year and one word to describe the new year. Being the word lover and New Year lover that I am, I love the idea of this tradition.

I've been thinking about it ever since she mentioned it before our trip to the hot springs. I still don't know what the word was for last year - The Year of Leaving, maybe? Let me know if you think of it for me. I did choose a word for 2008, though. Not too surprising that I went right for the future word, is it? I just can't get that future stuff out of my head. Anyway, it came to me right around the time I realized that if I wanted to actually get a chance to chat with Pam while we were hanging out at the hot springs, I was going to have to get into the pool they called the Lobster Pot. 110 degrees. The word I needed at that moment was Bravery. At the end of the year we can decide how well I did with this, but I'm liking it so far. I think the future word will work best if it's a word that will help me when I feel like I'm at a crossroads, sort-of a question I can ask myself.

In other future news, I've finally put together my list of 36 things to do before I turn 37. Last year, I fell in love with Andrea's list, and since she wrote a new one for her most recent birthday, I decided I needed to catch up.

It was interesting writing this - really hard to come up with that many. Is it cheating to have all that sock knitting on there? I don't care, I really do want to knit all those things and a lot more this year. I like knitting as a measure of time. The interesting thing about making the list this time was noticing that it made me feel like I'm already pretty content I with my life. I didn't feel like there were many things that I don't already do, nor did I feel like I needed a list to get myself to do things. Though there are some dreaded tasks on there, like teeth cleaning. Okay, it was also interesting to think about what I didn't want to put on the list, like the trips I want to take to Bora Bora and Iceland one day, or anything about, um, not being single for the rest of my life. Nope, those things just don't belong there right now. We're doing other things in 2008.

Anyway, here it is in all its glory. I do like having it, but more than that, I know that at the end of the year, I will like having it to look back on. I read a great interview the other day with Julie Christie, who I think I might want to be, and she quoted Sarah Polley saying "Memory is the way you make sense of love." I think memory is the way I make sense of everything. That's a big sentence, lots to think about there, but we'll leave that for the future.

1. Hold the twins
2. Stay at Ace Portland again
3. Make myself some more nice mittens for the work walk
4. Ride the Orbiter one more time before they close it down
5. Read the new translation of War & Peace
6. Read all of J.D. Salinger again
7. Walk 1,000 miles
8. Go back to buying a book of poetry a week
9. Blog a little about aforementioned poetry books
10. Get rid of unwanted books
11. Do something about the closets
12. Go to Tomales again
13. Learn how to use that feature on my camera associated with the little tulip icon
14. Make some financial goals
15. Eat at Nishino
16. Finish socks for Dad
17. Finish socks for Kirsten
18. Knit socks or Kristin (who also needs to be the target of a blog post this year, for sure!)
19. Knit socks for Regan (ditto the paranthetical item above)
20. Knit socks for the latest additions to our writing group
21. Knit shawl for Kate
22. Knit something special for Algene
23. Knit something special for Eugison
24. Take another ferry trip to Bainbridge
25. Get my teeth cleaned
26. Set up my writing stuff at home
27. Buy another piece of art
28. Frame another existing piece or two
29. Get back to the ranch for a picture with grown-up Liam
30. Get to Macleod Residence (or breakfast, or the yarn store) with HxB
31. Get Pam to Seattle, preferably for something completely frivolous
32. Take a secret trip that I can’t talk about here yet
33. Pick up the novel again. Just pick it up.
34. Take more writing risks
35. Take even more writing risks than that
36. Be brave

And that's gonna have to keep you kids busy for the weekend, cause guess what? I'm getting on a plane again tomorrow AM. It's a good thing they put out the New Yorker weekly.

XOXO
H