It’s 1:54pm and Dave is snoring on the floor, the dogs alternating sniffing him like roadkill and swaying to the rhythm of his rattle. Gretta’s gone sledding with a friend and Emma is glued to Spongebob eating goldfish straight out of the box and I’ve been trying to knit this New Year’s Eve hangover away for hours. I’ve got a fat beefstick in my mouth, cigar-style, and no my friends that is neither metaphor nor euphemism. I’m waiting for Dave to wake up and watch Emma watch Spongebob so that I can fall asleep myself, roll this day up like a soiled rug and toss it in the yard.
But this is the day for resolutions, right? The day for taking stock and aiming high! I love a good list like I love yarn and chocolate and books and yet I balk, too, both at the idea of cataloging my faults for public consumption and at the image of squeezing myself into a cheerleading skirt, shaking my perky pompoms in your face. Go 2-0! Win big ’10! 2-0-1-0 let’s be-gin!
The truth is there are a few things about myself I’m really struggling with, things I’d like to change, and a day like this makes you think about those things and thinking about hard things sucks when you’re missing a few key braincells and you’ve got beef stick breath. I don’t really want to talk about them here because unfortunately I think I’m becoming even more cynical about public sharing after a couple of weird experiences lately and I’m feeling cautious, protective, gun-shy. Then again, oh, Lord, how I’d love to ease up on myself about this space, in terms of craft. I’d love to go back to basics a bit and trust that my voice is interesting enough to you without the shimmery gift wrap, and hell, maybe I’ll even post more than two or three times a month if I’m not constantly thinking about bedazzling the butts of your jeans with precious hard jewels of words. I also want to stop flogging myself for not properly keeping up with all of the lives of you out there in the ether. For about a year I’ve been calling myself a “terrible blog reader” but maybe I could change the label on my chest to “Really busy person who means well, I promise.” Maybe I could change a lot of the labels I slap on myself. Wouldn’t that be nice? Or, you know, maybe I could learn to not care quite so much what other people think. Ha!
Most of all it just sucks to wake up on the very first day of a brand new decade feeling like the inside of Shrek’s intestines. This was a perfectly preventable moment and yes, I had a ridiculously good time last night, but I’d like to come to a place where I can truly believe that this brand of fun can be made without blindly following the pied piper of alcohol so illegal it can only be smuggled in by your visiting-from-another-country friend. (For instance.) Or, you know, the $10 bottles of wine lined up like sentries in my kitchen, attending and defending the front lines of my social anxiety and perfectionism and boredom and procrastination and creative muse whenever I give the signal. I need a good long detox, in so many ways, of so many things.
Emma just shook herself out of her Spongebob coma and requested I play with her, so I’m gonna slither off the couch and crawl army-style on my belly over to the Swan Princess Castle and continue on with the faking of this wasted day in the hopes that maybe, please yes and thank you, I can be proud of the other 364 to come.
To beginnings.
