Begin
“If you begin and it is not the beginning, begin again.”
It's a little amusing that I started back to writing in this online space by titling the first post from this line. This line, an itty bitty thing from a story that's barely longer in length, but the kind that sticks with you. This line has been echoing through my heart and head for years, and when I paused a few weeks ago to think about what word I wanted to focus on for this new year, I immediately knew it needed to be "begin", and that this line would carry me through, reminding me that there is always time to start over. And so, in the spirit of beginning, my first act of this first day of this new year seemed perfectly fitted to be in connection with this space.
A friend asked me casually the other day if I planned to come back, to write again after the long lull between November to now. Normally, I'd make excuses, or have a thousand little reasons for why I'd been absent and why it really didn't matter - it's most likely only her and my mother are reading this anyway as I have not actively shared it with anyone I know this time around. Unlike my past spaces, I've been quiet here, nesting on my own terms. But her question came without judgment, and so I told the truth of the absence - I hated the name I chose for the site. It felt perfect at the time, and I still feel so much that I am wading around in this middle space slightly above average, but every time I came back here, with the clean design I loved, and my words and photos, it didn't feel like my own. It felt like the space of someone who was bragging that they were above average, and well, if I myself knew the story behind the title and was still bothered by it, well, what did I expect from someone happening upon this space and reading it for the first time? I admitted that I felt silly to care so much about a name, but my spaces are my homes, as much if they are for my words or my chairs, and this one didn't fit right. I admitted that I felt to silly to rename a website with so little traffic, to start over right after starting over, but she gently reminded me of the passage above, words I'd shared just days before, and she smiled at me, and I knew - begin again. If it's not the beginning, begin again.
And so maybe that's how this word is growing inside me for the new year, as a reminder that I need to be present, to own what I want and what I do not want, to take steps, regardless how small they may be, to have beginnings and to make my way. I write these words here in a very public space that very few may ever actually see, and I send the thoughts out into the ether and I I know that deep down, they are mostly for myself.
2014 was heavy and unyielding, and I wound myself up into a protective skein and I think I believed that if I stayed very still that the world would not find me, would not force me to accept the unacceptable, and I countered every idea with a reason why it wouldn't work or didn't matter. I shrouded myself in questions about what might be and took comfort in spending so much attempting to answer my worries that I had no time left to attempt any of the change.
It's now 2015, and I've no space for any of that. I'm too tired of being too tired, and I'm ready to lessen the reasons why not and strengthen the reasons why, with the main one being that it's just time, and some days, that's enough.
I want a year of beginnings, both big and small. I want to make more, share more, love more, own more, claiming this life and my choices each day. I want to be less afraid of speaking up about what I want and having those little confessions lead to beginnings. I want to want big, fat, ridiculous things that might not be possible, but I want to want them anyway, and to work toward making them happen. I want to want tiny, seemingly insignificant things without embarrassment, and to celebrate their existence when they come.
I want to begin the year by making a claim to the person I am beginning this first day of January as - a woman in her mid thirties who's half little girl and half grumpy old man, a voracious reader, a lover of lines - the poetic, the dotted, the direct and indirect, and the ones that spur us to cross them. I am someone who's discovered a love for documenting life with paper and glue, words and images, and I think, no, I know that I am getting better, that I might one day even be good at it, and I want to do more with it this year. I am someone who is often too sensitive and too cold, all in the same inappropriate moments, but it makes me love the world in a way that allows it to break my heart, and I am thankful for that, but I'd like to begin to be warmer and stronger when I need to be, or when others I care about need that from me.
“There is a list, I said nearing the end. It’s a list you make yourself, and at the top of the page you write, Things You Should Know.”