The Year in Review

Photo by Igor Kyryliuk & Tetiana Kravchenko on Unsplash

December 14, 2023

It seems to me that my attention usually is scattered over many things, mostly unrelated. I’m rather nomadic inside my head, without any fixed pattern of movement. It’s hard for me to write a bio or any short, intriguing description of who I am and what I do. (Have I even done that yet, here at Substack? I’ll have to check.)

So I’m pleased to note that a focus of my work that has been consistent over the whole year is my blog. I started it back in June 2020, then stopped and started several times over the next 2 1/2 years, while I struggled with the both the functional and the aesthetic aspects of building a website, plus the attendant interior obstacles of comparison, self-judgment, and despair. (This is easy — for everybody but me!)

Then I switched to another website builder and things got a little easier. Although I still wasn’t entirely happy with the design and functioning, I started posting again last February and continued with some regularity. Around the same time, I began working with a coach, who in my very first session suggested that I outsource the site design and recommended her own designer.

As soon as I heard that advice, I knew it was exactly what I needed to do. This was probably the single best decision I made all year.

I still believe that I’m extraordinarily ignorant and ill-equipped for the digital world, although, as I get to know a few fellow explorers and hear similar versions of my own confusion, they chip away at my wall of self-doubt and give me courage to keep writing and publishing.

And I do love this work. Addie beautifully describes the process in her Writers Who Don’t post this week.

Now that I’ve begun a consistent practice, I find I can’t stop, I find all the stories I’ve held inside want a resting place outside of me. New phrases and ideas strike me in the shower, in the middle of the night. — Addie

Well, nothing much strikes me in the shower or the middle of the night, but the ideas come to me whenever I walk — ideally outdoors, but even just from my desk to the kitchen. My writing time isn’t organized and doesn’t conform to a daily schedule, and it involves way too many trips to the kitchen for snacks (that’s where I get some of my best ideas!) but it works for me. And I love how I can start with an idea and then it grows and meanders and moves out of sight, and eventually returns in a wildly different form.

Take this post, for instance. I started with an idea to write a year-end recap of three elements of healthy, generative living that I explore on my website: moving, playing, and learning. Now, returning from wandering along a side trail of personal history, I’ll get on with the recap.

Move

My biggest inspiration for starting a blog, back in 2020, was the book Keep It Moving: Lessons for the Rest of Your Life, by the dancer and choreographer Twyla Tharp.

I want to reprogram how you think about aging by getting rid of two corrosive ideas. First, that you need to emulate youth, resolving to live in a corner of the denial closet marked “reserved for aged.” Second, that your life must contract with time. — Twyla Tharp, Keep It Moving, p. 4

Tharp also says that “the older we get, the more we should commit to physical activity. … Getting physical and improving is how we can continue to thrive among the living” (p. 29).

For daily strength training I go to a Pure Barre studio a mile from my house. True to its advertising, it is more than just a workout. For me, it’s a community and a way of life. The unit of achievement is one 50-minute class taken, and this year, on May 27th, I celebrated my 500th class.

In other movement news, I hiked in five national parks this year.

Play

For much of the year I’ve been feeling uneasy and defensive about the lack of “play” in my life, understood as the games and sports and recreation that many people truly enjoy. Lately, however, I’ve been claiming my own realms of play — the activities in which I lose myself for hours and then come out joyful.

Writing, as I’ve noted, is one of those playful pursuits; so is playing a musical instrument, especially with a group. I’ve been playing clarinet in my town’s band for around 20 years, and this year, when the band’s 99-year-old bass clarinetist retired, I took his seat with the greatest respect and learned to play the bass clarinet, which I’ve grown to love.

Learn

The surprising turn in the path of today’s ideas is that this last piece came out first, in that detour into the origins of this blog. My next project is to learn how to connect my Substack to my website, so that anyone who wants to access the archive can find it easily.

But that’s for tomorrow. Today, I celebrate with gratitude for my work of this year, as it draws near to its end, and for all the amazing learning I’ve received, gifts from a benevolent universe.