The
turn of the year is always strange to me, and this one has been stranger than
most. Between stress from changes at
work and a few other factors, I never did feel very festive over the
holiday. I kept waiting to be excited for
Christmas—though I can be somewhat of a Grinch in the weeks between Halloween
and Christmas, usually my mood has turned by the time the shopping is
done. That didn’t happen this year. All the way up to Christmas itself I remained
tightly wound and wishing it would all be done.
Even on Christmas Day I was ambivalent.
I take from this a lesson not to let myself get too worried about
Christmas traditions—cards and gifts are all very well, but not worth the
sacrifice of my peace of mind.
As
for New Year’s, I was a little wiser, and chose rest over my traditional trip
to Richmond to visit friends. I did stay
up until midnight on New Year’s Eve, but not to watch the ball drop or to celebrate—I
only knew the new year had come by a glance at the clock from my reading
chair. And now 2020 is here, and only
now am I beginning to feel thoughtful.
What will this new year—and this new decade—bring?
Normally
I take a searching look at the previous year around this time, and perhaps I’ll
do that again, but this year I don’t quite feel up to it. 2019 was fairly innocuous. I’m not ashamed of the fact that I spent most
of the year at home reading books. I’ve
set myself a solid reading regimen that I have kept to faithfully, and I use it
to educate myself both in general, with books about society and history and psychology,
as well as in my craft with classics and bestselling works in my genre. Allow me to take this moment to strongly
recommend Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice, as well as Illuminae by
Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff, both excellent and beautifully complex science
fiction stories. In addition, I completed
my own science fiction epic, the Youngest series, which I hope to push hard
towards publication this year. And
speaking of publication, small pieces of my own work were featured in “From the
Depths” out of Haunted Waters Press, as well as on Typishly. It’s a small start, but a start nonetheless. For all that, I would gladly trade several
adventure opportunities.
I
did get out of Roanoke a few times, mostly at the end of the summer. I took a road trip to Syracuse and Boston in
August, and at the end of the same month I went to my cousin’s wedding in
Nashville. And music keeps me busy
almost as much as the written word—the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra performed first
a concert of Russian classics, then its typical holiday Pops concert, which
continues to grow in both size and extravagance. I’m also ever more proud of my children’s
choir, further proof of my deep appreciation of small things.
I
write all this mostly as a way of keeping record, so that someday I can have it
for reference. In this way I suppose
that my looking back is a way of looking forward. Usually that’s the only kind of looking
forward I do at the new year, but I find myself thinking more and more about
what’s to come. 2020 is, after all, the
year I will turn thirty, so I suppose it’s natural that I should expect some
big changes this year. But I hope I can
remember not to be disappointed in myself if those changes don’t come. I’m happy with my lot, and more and more I’m
learning not to compare my life to that of others. I have my own timeline to follow, and no one
knows it but me.
With
that in mind, I continue on with my day and my month and my year. Time continues on, fast and slow all at once,
and we can only follow. Happy 2020,
everyone.
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