I have alluded before that my New Year begins in September. This would be my New Year of the Soul. There are circumstances, I'm sure, that effect this feeling. My birthday's in September, the world gears up for a new season in September, buckling down for the cold with sweaters and new-formed deadlines. Of course, we've all been trained this way in some respect, because school starts in September. Those things are obvious.
What isn't obvious is why my soul starts searching when September rolls around. On no specific date, but certainly at that time of year and always pressing, I feel rebirth approaching. My soul's New Year is celebrated quietly. Solitude becomes me as I wait for details, at the ready with pen and page and baited breath. I know reformation is coming; I can feel it. I am ready.
The lead up to January is a different sort of New Year. There is no feeling except one of urgency: this is what I've come to know as my New Year of the Mind. My soul, having just experienced rebirth and renewed searching, is exhausted, and my mind takes over. I go to work I come home I organize I tidy I readjust and I focus on the external. December is always loaded with numbers: alarm clocks and overtime-before-playtime and addresses I've failed to send mail to. Phone numbers I didn't call appear on my hands like conviction. I review the dates and what I did on them, bank accounts and what I did to them, and make long and lengthy budgets for the new year. Every December I do this, and I always end the same: with regret that I didn't change things, hope that I will change them this year, and amazement at how quickly I lost step with time.
In December, my mind reviews my soul's declarations. I read old posts from New Years' past and subconsciously check off former to-do lists, or add to the one I'm now forming. I congratulate my soul on how far it's come, or remind it to be thankful for the same. My current circumstances dance in the forefront of my brain and I am humbled, reminded of God's hand in things, and pray feverishly that he won't take it all away this year. I am always afraid he'll take it away.
So this must be why I make lists. Intentions and blog posts are written, numbers are crunched, justifications are made (so are promises), and I sit like a schoolgirl in the hallway outside the principle's office, looking like some Norman Rockwell painting, waiting to be called in. Beside me on the bench in a stack are the recipe books, note pads, journals, prose, jots and scribbles, and of course: my day planner. My nylons are scratchy and my shoes are too tight, and everyone else got to go home early. It's just me and the echoes; me and hope that what I've got is enough.
This year has been a blur of beauty and healing, but it's been a blur all the same. I have seen dreams realized, learned to be loved, and I've given myself second chances. Even though I feel like it was just yesterday, and it's not even really here yet, I want to wish you a happy new year; whichever kind of new year this is for you.
While it can be tempting to forgo Intentions all together, what with their alarming capacity to disappear into the abyss, I want to encourage you to keep forming these ideas anyway. Let your good intentions come to light, even though you put some down last year, or have been putting the same ones down for a decade. Let your good intentions come to light, and follow through with them. Let your good intentions come to light, because the world needs more of you, and it needs you (and you need you) to act on your good intentions.
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