Wednesday, December 31, 2014

2014, I made a lot of things in you.

I spent a mentionable amount of time this year sitting on the floor of the living room, burning wood and etching glass and once stabbing myself in the leg with a linocutter. I have felt unmoored, I guess, from most of the hobbies I used to ride, and I have spent so many years not touching things with my palms that I wanted to feel things more than thinking them. I also live with a maker, which has surely shifted the ways in which I experience the world. In any case, most things feel safe enough to touch with my whole hands.

My horoscope at the beginning of the year predicted that I would commit no major acts of self-sabotage this year, and I think I may have managed that. I worked hard this year in a lot of intangible areas, in working hard, in being a better partner, in maintaining perspective. It has been a rough year for the world in general, and I have been doing my best to not make it worse.

We looked at a lot of beautiful places this year, on the Washington coast and in Oregon and California. I suppose someday it might get old, how different this land is from the smooth sand I grew up with, but until then I plan to keep filling my eyes all up with it.

2014, I hope that you are leading to a 2015 of change, to a year when we are not suffering from outrage fatigue because there are just so many things to be outraged about. I hope that things are getting better and safer instead of just louder. I read a story a few months ago about a German town that tricked a neo-nazi march into indirectly contributing to an anti-nazi charity, and I hope that's what you were, 2014: the decision point that will trick the world into being kinder.