Winter Beginnings
Doesn't it feel strange beginning a new year in the dead of winter?
Everything is just all bare and empty everywhere. Like the world has just been stripped of all wonderful things. My fingers and nose always ache around this time and it makes going outside sort of unbearable. I also begin to hibernate. I always start to relate with being a bear in this season. I want to sleep and just in general I'm a complete grump. At the same time I'm anxious about all of this oppressive cold and the weird hue that the sun takes on, each and every day. I've already caught my first cold of the season and thankfully, since summer, if I get sick it lasts for only a very short while. I'm hoping that's a sign my immune system is kicking into gear after all these years. Well, the cold has been awful despite that. Fevers and things like that. But now it's finally drifting away and I'm just a little lacking in energy, more than usual that is.
Either way, colds or not it doesn't take away how barren winter really is. Then again, I've always felt that there's an unexpected safe place in emptiness and barren days, loneliness or solitude. Boredom, quietness. Those places are often where I find my beginnings. Sometimes I think that if you're just too full of things that you won't have any room to start anything new. How can you grow if you're already so large with moments?
So, I suppose as strange as it feels for new years to begin in the middle of all of this cold - it does make a whole lot of sense.
The quietness makes room for everything. That's why I feel it's really one of my favorite places. A place of no intrusion. No bright colors or busy sounds to distract me and make me curious. Only the time to sink down into myself, the way you sink down into bed. To wrap myself up in that heavy blanket, introspection and get ready to rifle through every moment and thought with only sleepy clarity to guide me. The way you could only do with your most favorite book, when you're all hazy from taking a hot bath and can't keep your eyes open anymore.
At least, that's what I can hope for. But this winter and new year is turning out to follow in the path of 2011. It's full of business and things! I never thought it was true what my mom always tried to repeat to me when I said I couldn't wait to be grown up. That it wasn't true at all, because when you grow up everything goes so much faster. I should enjoy how slow it all felt.
Now I feel like I would give anything for things to slow down and have some time for some silence.
Instead, here I am rambling in place of my New Years wishes! I had been trying very hard to make a post before the year ended and missed it all together.
So instead I decided on the sixth, since it's the anniversary for my livejournal. Nine years, can you really believe it? I can and I only hope I've managed to bring myself together a little bit! (Though the truth is, I'm just as uncontrollable and odd as I've always been. I guess there are things you can't change about yourself no matter how much you try. They're just stuck there.) I've just managed to hide it away where it won't be as noticeable to poor by-standers though.
I don't have much to say about 2011 as a whole. It's actually been really.. exhausting. Like nothing else ever has. I think it made me feel more emotionally thin than ever before. I can't pin-point any one moment. Only that there have been so many of them and some days I just feel like a zombie, pulling through my days as best as I can.
Though there were a great deal of beautiful things to be remembered. I was able to travel, which is my highest aim for any year. And which also meant lots of being a foodie and trying delicious new things. Also, for the first time getting to play family and do a lot of therapeutic cooking.
I've also learned a bit about dragging yourself through the mud to get you and the people you love on to tomorrow. I've worried at times that it's made me harder, or even more neurotic. I never really wanted to be a fighter but there are some things worth fighting through, no matter how you come out the other side. I've really learned the merit of hard determination and using your head. I only just hope I can keep hold of the warm things, too. Because it would all be pointless without it.
And so I've pulled myself to the new year and here we are! I still don't believe much in resolutions, only because I don't like the idea of lying to myself. If I'm going to do it, then I'll get it done when the time comes. Also, life has a way of just happening and ruining all of our best laid plans. It's more exciting to just run with it. Exhilarating even!
Home life has been difficult for the past year or two but I am certainly fighting to make sure that I do whatever I can to build myself and the people I love a bright future.
I finally have a nice, stable job! So it will be a blessing to have my own money coming in. And I hope it will feel good to be busy at something that keeps my mind going, even if it isn't at exciting or engaging as I would like. We all have to start somewhere!
Though that seems to be the only goal at my feet. As usual, the rest is open road - some way or another. I'm sort of walking into an empty space and all I can hope for is that I create something nice this year, something beautiful and fulfilling and whole. Because it's really the only thing I want. This year, I think I would be happy if things could be warm. And that I'll be able to create something worth adding to the world. Something lovely to fill up all of this emptiness. Not just mine.. but everyone's.
Also, maybe this will encourage me to post more often! Though it's likely just to cooking, clothes and cats by Christina.
Happy New Year!
Everything is just all bare and empty everywhere. Like the world has just been stripped of all wonderful things. My fingers and nose always ache around this time and it makes going outside sort of unbearable. I also begin to hibernate. I always start to relate with being a bear in this season. I want to sleep and just in general I'm a complete grump. At the same time I'm anxious about all of this oppressive cold and the weird hue that the sun takes on, each and every day. I've already caught my first cold of the season and thankfully, since summer, if I get sick it lasts for only a very short while. I'm hoping that's a sign my immune system is kicking into gear after all these years. Well, the cold has been awful despite that. Fevers and things like that. But now it's finally drifting away and I'm just a little lacking in energy, more than usual that is.
Either way, colds or not it doesn't take away how barren winter really is. Then again, I've always felt that there's an unexpected safe place in emptiness and barren days, loneliness or solitude. Boredom, quietness. Those places are often where I find my beginnings. Sometimes I think that if you're just too full of things that you won't have any room to start anything new. How can you grow if you're already so large with moments?
So, I suppose as strange as it feels for new years to begin in the middle of all of this cold - it does make a whole lot of sense.
The quietness makes room for everything. That's why I feel it's really one of my favorite places. A place of no intrusion. No bright colors or busy sounds to distract me and make me curious. Only the time to sink down into myself, the way you sink down into bed. To wrap myself up in that heavy blanket, introspection and get ready to rifle through every moment and thought with only sleepy clarity to guide me. The way you could only do with your most favorite book, when you're all hazy from taking a hot bath and can't keep your eyes open anymore.
At least, that's what I can hope for. But this winter and new year is turning out to follow in the path of 2011. It's full of business and things! I never thought it was true what my mom always tried to repeat to me when I said I couldn't wait to be grown up. That it wasn't true at all, because when you grow up everything goes so much faster. I should enjoy how slow it all felt.
Now I feel like I would give anything for things to slow down and have some time for some silence.
Instead, here I am rambling in place of my New Years wishes! I had been trying very hard to make a post before the year ended and missed it all together.
So instead I decided on the sixth, since it's the anniversary for my livejournal. Nine years, can you really believe it? I can and I only hope I've managed to bring myself together a little bit! (Though the truth is, I'm just as uncontrollable and odd as I've always been. I guess there are things you can't change about yourself no matter how much you try. They're just stuck there.) I've just managed to hide it away where it won't be as noticeable to poor by-standers though.
I don't have much to say about 2011 as a whole. It's actually been really.. exhausting. Like nothing else ever has. I think it made me feel more emotionally thin than ever before. I can't pin-point any one moment. Only that there have been so many of them and some days I just feel like a zombie, pulling through my days as best as I can.
Though there were a great deal of beautiful things to be remembered. I was able to travel, which is my highest aim for any year. And which also meant lots of being a foodie and trying delicious new things. Also, for the first time getting to play family and do a lot of therapeutic cooking.
I've also learned a bit about dragging yourself through the mud to get you and the people you love on to tomorrow. I've worried at times that it's made me harder, or even more neurotic. I never really wanted to be a fighter but there are some things worth fighting through, no matter how you come out the other side. I've really learned the merit of hard determination and using your head. I only just hope I can keep hold of the warm things, too. Because it would all be pointless without it.
And so I've pulled myself to the new year and here we are! I still don't believe much in resolutions, only because I don't like the idea of lying to myself. If I'm going to do it, then I'll get it done when the time comes. Also, life has a way of just happening and ruining all of our best laid plans. It's more exciting to just run with it. Exhilarating even!
Home life has been difficult for the past year or two but I am certainly fighting to make sure that I do whatever I can to build myself and the people I love a bright future.
I finally have a nice, stable job! So it will be a blessing to have my own money coming in. And I hope it will feel good to be busy at something that keeps my mind going, even if it isn't at exciting or engaging as I would like. We all have to start somewhere!
Though that seems to be the only goal at my feet. As usual, the rest is open road - some way or another. I'm sort of walking into an empty space and all I can hope for is that I create something nice this year, something beautiful and fulfilling and whole. Because it's really the only thing I want. This year, I think I would be happy if things could be warm. And that I'll be able to create something worth adding to the world. Something lovely to fill up all of this emptiness. Not just mine.. but everyone's.
Also, maybe this will encourage me to post more often! Though it's likely just to cooking, clothes and cats by Christina.
Happy New Year!