I Begin

Generally I write a post just before the new year. This year, I've chosen (well, waited) to post after the beginning of the new year. This is partially because I was busy tying up some loose ends, (although in reality nothing is ever that final) by having some tough but fruitful discussions that needed to take place. However, it all works out because this year I'd like to focus on beginnings, however arbitrary they may be, rather than endings. Honestly, there's not much that just ends with the turning of the year anyway. Yes, 2010 was a full year with many challenges and unexpected joys (five months abroad remains a highlight) but isn't every year full of both? Our cares and pleasures stay with us no matter what the date.

I have decided that I am very much opposed to making lists. At least for myself, anyway. I am an obsessive list maker when it comes to my daily tasks, it is true. New year's lists are seductive in their promise of a shiny new routine, a new improved you ... in my experience the over ambitious list always leads to failure because we aim to remake ourselves when we shouldn't feel the need to. At any rate, I've admitted to myself that I cannot follow through on ambitious lists of new year's resolutions and I've decided to save myself the disappointment. This is similar to my realization that I simply need to take a yoga class (one in which I am expected to show up in front of others) in order to set up a regular exercise regime. So, regular yoga is not on a list because I have already built it into my schedule for next semester.

In a similar vein, my approach to lists of books to be read also informs my feelings on new year's lists as well. I generally reject reading lists in favor of the spontaneous find, and whatever whim may take me when doing leisure reading. This winter break I had expected to read "T.S. Spivet." However, I've found myself engrossed in needlework and reading "How to Eat' by Nigella Lawson. It may seem odd to sit a read through a cookbook as if it were an engrossing novel, but Nigella is unique. Her cookbook is largely narrative based, the story of her cooking process and her intense, sensual love of eating and therefore cooking. It's inspirational because I can't stop thinking about how I will shop and cook differently this semester - for example, it's high time that I roasted a chicken on my own. I like to give myself the freedom to indulge in unexpected reading finds, and I feel the same way about the new year. I like to leave lots of room for the unexpected.

A little structure is always a good thing, though. A few simple things to keep you centered never hurts. This is why my one commitment of the new year is to read "A Year with Rilke" translated and edited by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows. I've given in wholeheartedly to Rilke and I hope that he will inspire more blogging this coming year. But mostly these daily readings will me for me and for me alone as I navigate 2011. What with graduation and the many decisions that come with that turning point, I'm sure I'll need it.

However, this is only one thing and therefore does not count as a list in my eyes. And thus, I welcome the new year. I'll let Rilke have the last (or first) word:

"I love all beginnings, despite their anxiousness and their uncertainty, which belong to every commencement. If I have earned a pleasure or a reward, or if I wish that something had not happened; if I doubt the worth of an experience and remain in my past – then I choose to begin at this very second. Begin what? I begin. I have already thus begun a thousand lives."

-- Rilke (early journals), entry one from "A Year with Rilke."