Category: archived

posts prior to 2022

hi

// Tuesday, June 16, 2020

lol the 100 days project, that was a thing that did not happen. but i have started journaling more consistently, and i have done some yoga, and i sewed a tote bag. and we’re so many states of global and national crisis. so, you know, adjusted goals or whatever.

will i write more words on here? will i post regularly? is this just a post to see if Automatic was finally able to fix my weird blog title email issue?

anyone’s guess, except that it isn’t. times have gotten real fucking weird, and are lots of juxtapositions all the time always, since i last posted on here. i still don’t know what this site is, or is meant to be. i still want to write. i will probably still attempt every so often to figure out a way to write on here consistently, because i miss writing words on the internet, doing the thing and shouting into the void, or whatever, since that has always been the way that i am with this sort of thing, where it’s technically for an audience but also not for an audience because it’s just me, being me, typing and submitting and doing the thing without editing because i like how my my typing voice is when i don’t overthink it too much.

over the last few weeks, i have been reading, and engaging, and learning, constantly learning, and fighting against my own defensiveness to figure out what’s underneath that. and i have bene donating, because there are many ways to do a thing and donating is one of those ways and it is important. black lives matter. black trans lives matter. black queer lives matter. i am so happy about the supreme court decision that the civil rights law protects LGBTQ+ workers.

donate. vote. protest if that makes sense for your situation. read. learn. do the thing. (i know four people read this. i know you all know all of the things. but i just want to make sure that i have written those words here, in this space, because it is important to do the work AND acknowledge that it is important to do the work.)

more soon.

day 4!

// Monday, May 4, 2020

there was a post I saw this week on Facebook or twitter or Instagram that rather succinctly said that anything worth doing is worth doing half-assed. tomorrow I’ll find the thing, or try to: but I think there something to be said for that. I strive, in a lot of ways, for perfection, and sometimes that can be paralyzing. For the last few years when I’ve attempted this project that has definitely been the case.

So this is simply a post to say hello, it is day four, this is not a great post but it is me doing the thing. forming a habit, even if not perfectly.

May the Fourth be with you, etcetera.

on being me, always

// Sunday, May 3, 2020

Day 3 of 100: Forward progress. Maybe this will actually be a habit. A forewarning, here: I have things to say but my mind is disjointed, so I am trying to embrace the freewrite a bit. (Sidenote, and relatedly: lol forever, past!Melissa, that you thought you’d someday turn this into a “real blog” whatever that means – because here’s the thing: I am me. I am the human being that writes the long winded post that maybe means something, and also maybe doesn’t, and just kind of likes how words sound when they’re strung together a certain way. I don’t want to lose that, and honestly, I want to get back to it. Because I am all about the prose poems, and the things that are not that but aspire to be.)

—

I spent more time than I care to admit today fighting with the layout design I barely remember working on 6 years ago, and while I can say for certain that I don’t see anything that should be removing my site title in post subscription emails, I can also say I did not dive deep into the meaning of various site file terms. I can say that I achieved a small victory and the “submit” button of the subscribe widget is now readable. So I guess that is something? Trying to focus on the small victories these days, I guess. Here’s to that. I also found a way to use the classic editor on here, and my oh my do I enjoy it more than the new one. I am a creature of habit, even if I’m not always the best at forming new habits.

I’ve been missing the beach a lot recently, thinking about time spent outside and in nature and that feeling of just…existing, without thinking that everything is terrible and the world is going to hell. But: I think there is something fascinating that we’re all witnessing, in some strange way, in these strange times. There’s a reprioritization, a collective understanding in a way that maybe there hadn’t been – at least in some circles, a heightened awareness of what, precisely, is actually important. And I don’t in any way at all mean to imply that that’s a silver lining, because we are in a global pandemic; for the love of all things, it would just be better if we, you know, weren’t in the midst of that, and could hug each other and visit friends and go to restaurants and generally just go outside without wondering what might happen. (If you told me three months ago that I’d be quite anxious about going to the grocery store, I would have thought you were very odd, and I would have been very confused.)

I, like others in these times, obviously, have been thinking a lot about health, about illness, about death. I reread my post about my mom (tw: death, but mostly it’s about life, and feelings, and not her death) – on going quiet and silences – recently (yesterday? today? last week? what is time?!), and it remains one of my favorite things I’ve written. I’ve been thinking a lot about her, and words, and the words I wrote in that post, too: I wrote that post almost exactly 4 years ago. Mother’s Day is next weekend. Every year I think it will be…better, and it is, but it it is also, somehow, exactly the same. This year there is a bit less advertising, I guess, if only because there is less shopping? I don’t know, exactly. This year is weirder, to be sure – and I have feelings about that – about her, and this time we’re in,  but I’m not sure they are feelings meant for this blog. But it’s still a year, without my mom, where there are many things I’d love to talk to her about.

This week, my cousin – older, though I’m bad with numbers and can’t tell you exactly, but much closer to my mom’s generation than mine, has high school age kids – sent me the photo of a photo that is the featured image of this post, along with several others he found of me, of my parents, of my cousins. I know it’s a common thing of our ~millennial generation~ to wax poetic about simpler times, but like: I don’t want everything to be lost to old phones and dead hard drives and backup drives tucked into drawers that can’t be plugged into anything anymore without adapters that are expensive or hard to find (not that I am, um, speaking from experience here at all). I think there is something to be said about artsy, spur of the moment photos that capture a feeling more than an image of a thing, but the image is there, too.

I realize the…something like irony, of writing about all of this on the internet, which is not a tangible thing in a notebook and not a thing that lives forever (I mean, it does, and I love the wayback machine as much as anyone, but still). But here’s the thing: typing is how I think through words, which is a phrase I used to use a lot on a couple of sites that aren’t quite defunct but basically are, and I am trying to find my way back to that.

Happy Sunday night. Here’s hoping this week brings whatever we all need, whatever that may be.

(My Yoast plugin is so mad at me. 45% of my sentences contain more than 20 words, apparently. Hashtag I am me, always.)

may 2! day 2, etc.

// Saturday, May 2, 2020

So naturally, since I said no one got posts emailed, of course yesterday’s post emailed (hi e and sr and t??). Today’s project, which may or may not have worked, is fixing it so that WordPress/Jetpack doesn’t call this ~my great WordPress blog~ in those emails. No idea if it worked, so: yes. Hi.

I have things I want to post about tomorrow! Real things! But it is 11:19pm pacific and it’s day two of my restarted thing, and I’ll be dammed if I’m not going to at least make it a week.

Happy Saturday. Today T and I learned we can screen mirror NYT crosswords on the tv, so here’s to being very millennial and very old all at the same time.

(How many typos will I have today?! Yesterday was just one, I think…)

just do the thing: a modified 100 day project

// Friday, May 1, 2020

So I missed the real beginning of the 100 day project. Which is to say that I didn’t miss it at all, but did it exactly the same as I have the last couple of years: I realized it was starting, I had no plan, and so I made a half-assed attempt at coming up with a goal, like “write in a notebook for 100 days” or something, and then, to no one’s surprise at all (read: me. this was not a shared project), I didn’t, you know, do the thing. Because I didn’t have a concrete plan, or really any sort of motivation, because we’re in these weird pandemic times and I’ve got a lot of existential questioning that happens on a regular basis.

But now it’s May 1st. It’s a new month, where it’s a fresh start but everything still feels like the worst kind of groundhog day. But I am inspired to at least try to do the thing. And especially because I’ve realized the Jetpack email thing isn’t working, so no one knows I’ve actually “reactivated” this, so to speak, and I am accountable to the internet as a whole and to me, but only I know that, I have some hope. Because it’s my pressure, not perceived pressure of others.

I don’t have a plan for content, or a theme, or any of that. But for the next 100 days, I am going to write in this space, or just post – maybe pictures, I’m not sure – but definitely words. There will be words here, and I am going to do the thing.

Because I haven’t a fucking clue what 2020 is, but I think, looking back, I might want it documented in some way.

Also, I am going to figure out this block editor. And why Jetpack only kind of works. And also – some of my older posts might reappear. I think there are some – I know there is at least one – that I want to exist visibly on this site. So here’s to that.

Hope all of you who read this are staying healthy and safe to the best of of your abilities.

hello!

// Friday, March 27, 2020

hi. happy 2020. happy march, which has been a year in and of itself. i’m ~doing a thing~ and archived all of the old posts, and i need a placeholder post so that this site doesn’t look completely dumb while i rework and figure out a plan. what better time to resurrect an old wordpress blog (and this domain i pay for for email purposes but haven’t used for blogging in two years nearly to the day) than during this weird weird time we’re living in where it kind of feels like the world is ending?

i want to pretend that i’m doing lack of punctuation for the style, but really i’m not, it’s because i’m awkward half sitting on the floor while doing this so i remember to take a break and go outside for a walk the minute i’m done.

hi, friends and handful of people who subscribed via email six years ago. i hope you all are well. going to try, yet again, to make this into a thing, because if nothing else, i’ll think i’ll want something tangible to document this strange time.

ps i haven’t been in wordpress in a real way for years, this new editor is confusing and weird, apologies if this is looks odd and/or is a giant mess.

hi, hello (take two)

// Sunday, April 1, 2018

Hi, friends. Remember when I said I was going to be around these parts more? I was a little overambitious about that, I guess – which is to say I was clearly 100% wrong, as it’s now nearly 7 months after my last post where I said that was a thing that was going to happen. I’ve been working on trying to figure out what I want this site to be: in a way that is so very me, instead of writing the words and editing the pictures and doing the thing, I’ve been instead making lists within lists within lists of how to break down categories and tags and make things coherent in anticipation of eventually writing more words in this space.

I’ve been feeling, truly, like I’m in a space where I want to be creative again, where I want to document things the way that I used to do. I’ve slowly been continuing to knit the hat I started over 2.5 years ago, and it’s going moderately well, if glacially slow. I took a whole bunch of pictures when we recently went on vacation with some friends. I’ve read 5 books this year already (A is for Alibi, B is for Burglar, All Over the Place, Meet the Frugalwoods, and A Year of Less), which is on the one hand not great but on the other hand, and very embarrassingly, more books than I read all of last year. T and I have been watching Chef’s Table on Netflix. I got over the weird fear I had of our KitchenAid stand mixer (a ridiculous thing that is true: I had never actually seen one in use – let alone used one – outside of food shows on TV) and have now successfully made chocolate chip cookies after being led very astray by the terrible recipe in the Joy of Cooking.

The 100 Day Project begins on Instagram April 3rd, and while I don’t have a clear idea if I’ll stick to an Instagram thing this year (last year I tried, and failed, at doing 100 days of watercolor plants), but I’m determined to use it as motivation, broadly, to get back into actually doing things that are creative, instead of just thinking and talking about how I want to do more things that are creative.

So, yes. Hi. I’m glad to be back in this space. Happy April, friends.

hi, hello

// Friday, September 1, 2017

Happy September, friends. Happy 2017, actually. I’ve been quiet around these parts, but expect to see me around here more soon. The featured image for this post is from Santa Cruz in May, but it seems fitting to start this up again with a picture of the beach. 

Today it was 113 degrees, if you believe the thermometer on my car, but it’s September 1st and therefore the unofficial start of fall, and. Fall has always felt more like new beginnings to me than January. So. Here’s to hopefully cooler weather and finding my way back to thinking through words. I’ve missed this space.  

on going quiet and silences

// Wednesday, April 20, 2016

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything, let alone written anything here. That isn’t the right way to start this post, probably, but I’m not sure there is a right way to write any of this. I had planned to write a post about resolutions for 2016: about goals, about plans, about the importance of being in the moment more and appreciating conversations in whatever manner they came about.

Fair warning: this is not that post. This is not particularly edited (other than for typos and even then I’m sure I’ve missed some), or even well-thought out; it is a post because I have wanted and needed to write words here, but I haven’t yet.

I’ve written three thank you cards since February 6th, four if I count the one I wrote to my grandma. I should have written at least a dozen; I still am planning to write them. But writing – of all varieties – has been difficult lately.

I could come up with reasons for why I didn’t write more in early January (work, work travel), but that isn’t it, either. The truth of the thing is that I was trying to reconcile my heart of hearts with my everyday heart, trying to figure out what I knew versus knew versus thought I knew, because for me, in my life, those have always been very different things, or at the very least not a given that they are identical things. Because going home to Massachusetts for Christmas made me worry, but I couldn’t tell if it was the normal level of worrying or something else.

I remember when the above picture was taken. iPhoto tells me that it was taken at 3:01pm on October 25, 2014 using my DSLR, but it can’t tell me that I was standing next to my mom on Corporation Beach in Dennis on the Cape, on our first trip down since my grandma moved to Florida. That we were stealing some time alone while my grandma took a nap in the motel/inn/whatever we were staying in and Tommy took a nap in his car in the Corporation Beach parking lot, and my mom and I walked the full length of the beach, this taken on our walk out while we talked about missing the cape, and work, and how nice it was to take a mini-vacation, and how there were all sorts of future possibilities, and how great T was (is), and how Corporation Beach was still the same beach. And we found a few shells and walked back and walked up around the snack shack and the swings, and it was wonderful and cozy.

By October 2015, the next time my grandma came up for a visit from Florida, I was in California. My mom took a week off work and they went up to Bar Harbor together, and stayed in Jasper’s Restaurant and Motel (linked here only because it just took me like half an hour to think of the name), and had a bunch of their meals there and drove all around and went into the park and like. Apparently it was a lovely trip, minus a gravel road adventure that involved a ditch and local Maine dudes in pickup trucks finding them and literally pulling the car out of the ditch (adventure courtesy of the fact that my grandma got directions from Mapquest). I honest to God thought I’d be going with them on the next trip, so even though I thought about flying back for it, the fact that I didn’t have a job at the time seemed like the more pressing issue.

If you’re keeping track, I’ve written 601 words as of the end of that paragraph without saying the thing I’m trying to say. It’s a poem about oranges, right? That’s how this works? (I will forever reference “Why I Am Not A Painter” by Frank O’Hara, which I seem to have more or less imprinted on when I read it in high school(?).) So. Yes. The thing I am trying to say.

My mom died at the end of January. She was 63. There’s more to it than that (isn’t there always?), but what it comes down to is that I am devastated, but I am functioning: I’m just not back to being a full person yet. Or I am a full, real person, but in a way that is very different from the way I was before. People have been wonderful. I flew home immediately, and I did more things on no sleep in the 36 hours immediately following than I would have thought possible. And then over the course of a week, I planned a church service and wrote a eulogy. And wrote and placed a death notice in the Boston Globe, and then people who’d known her from the Cape fifty years ago came to the service, which was so unexpected and so nice.

I’ve been back in California since February 14th, minus a trip to Philadelphia for a friend’s wedding and a work trip. I’ve been handling logistics and waiting for the things to finalize that are outside of my control. I’ve got a pile of pictures and a memory book from the service that I haven’t been able to look at yet. I’ve got credit card companies to deal with and the logistics of trying to handle Massachusetts legalities from across the country. But I’ve also got weekly-ish phone calls from my dad, and letters from my grandma, and text check-ins from lovely people. It’s Real Life, but a different type than the one I’m used to living. I still have condolence emails to respond to – emails sitting read but marked unread at the top of my inbox since February.

I’m working on getting back into writing. My voice feels so far from my brain right now, because by and large I’ve got to do lists and white noise floating around in there, but I’m working on it. Gradually. I’ve started running again, finally: my runs are pathetic by any normal running standards right now – 12 minute one mile runs – but it gets me out of my head and into a place where I need to focus on breathing, and I think that’s a good thing.

I don’t know how to end this, really, but thanks for sticking around. I hope to fill this space with words and maybe even photographs on a more regular basis. I’ve been jotting out a better tagging system on scraps of agenda paper, which is my new equivalent to the backs of receipts. So there’s that. Moving towards moving forward.

Tell people you love that you love them.

cape-me-mom

2015: in review

// Tuesday, January 5, 2016

2015 was a lot of things: it was an absolutely wonderful year, but it was also the year of all of the change. I moved from the East Coast, from the state where I’d lived in a 25-mile radius my entire life, to California, to the place where I peripherally knew three people and two other people I’d gone to college with. I went from living in a wonderful, wonderful apartment with a friend just outside of Boston to living with my boyfriend in a rented room in a lovely house and then a one-bedroom apartment, which is finally starting to come into its own in the best of ways. (We still need dining room chairs, but other than that we’re pretty much set, other than hanging up the artwork that is currently under our bed.)

I’ve learned a lot this year. I left my first post-college job, and I moved across the country and found a new job. I learned I have an extensive support network – and that it’s okay to lean on them when I need to do so (and I’ve also grown to tangibly appreciate just how wonderful all of the people in my life are, and for that I am incredibly grateful). I’ve struggled with distance but not with homesickness, knock-on-wood, and that both surprised and impressed me. I’ve realized that I have more strength than I sometimes give myself credit for. I haven’t been as good at keeping in touch with people as I’d like to be, but I’m working on it: adjusting to the time difference has been a little harder than I would have thought, especially combined with having a driving commute instead of a subway commute. The length of the commute is about the same, but being productive doesn’t exactly go hand-in-hand with driving a car…

I’d love to do a numbers breakdown of this year, but I wouldn’t even know where to begin, and while I did an excellent job of taking a ridiculous amount of photographs on the roadtrip out here and before I left Massachusetts, I’m not exactly on top of my game re: having everything organized. Time is a funny thing, and the month and a half I spent hardcore looking for jobs was more a job than I’d bargained for, I think? And then moving and settling into our apartment has been a time-consuming process (though I’ve loved it and it’s really satisfying to see everything come together: still a time-suck).

–
A (very) brief monthly breakdown, for posterity:

January


I went to the British Virgin Islands with my boyfriend and his family; sailing for a week: not something I was sure if I’d be able to do, but I enjoyed it immensely. Also, snorkeling. And sunsets. And having forced lack of screen/connectivity time. It was excellent.

February

2015-feb-snowshoeing-forge
All of the snow: so much snow, in fact, that Theresa and I went snowshoeing to a local coffee shop. The month of all of the snow and a 2.5 hour commute home, part of it walking through a blizzard. Boston got buried by snow, and the MBTA sucked, and people developed a sense of humor about it. Valentine’s Day was great. T and Kathleen and I went to the Chili Fest in Boston, which was great and also I had venison for the first time (yum).

March

2015-march-writing
The month I started thinking about all of the words, about writing and the purpose of writing and what I want and wanted to write. March was my most active posting month here, by far, and I’m a little sad at myself that I lost the momentum. Theresa visited grad schools and I bunny-sat Eloise a whole bunch, and it was wonderful. <3 that bun. I went running. I went to Forge a lot. I drank a lot of coffee and wrote.

April

2015-april-penguins
April was a low key month. We went on a double-date to the aquarium and watched the penguins forever. Because, penguins. T came up to my dad’s for Easter, which was nice and also very low-key. And in hilarious, wonderful, ridiculous things, a group of friends and I saw Kesha at Tufts Spring Fling.

May

2015-may-omam
I saw Of Monsters and Men at the Orpheum Theater in Boston. HEARTS IN MY EYES. But seriously: this was one of those shows where I barely took any pictures and most/all of the pictures I took are terrible, but being there was incredible. I made a lot of smoothies. I bought a whole bunch of succulents (sidenote: the big green rose-looking one – that survived the move to California, and the roadtrip, couldn’t handle us being gone for four days over Christmas, and was composted & replaced this morning, and it makes me the saddest). I finally visited Elizabeth, after meaning to visit for literal years – and we got excellent coffee and spent a whole bunch of time in Central Park and it was lovely and wonderful.

June

2015-june-strawberries
2015-june-reading-and-eloise
Theresa’s birthday and low-key celebrations mixed in with watching The Bachelorette (I miss our house quote-unquote viewing parties, as ridiculous as the show is/is not. I may or may not be planning to watch the upcoming season without having the house bonding time as an excuse.) I saw the new Jumbo at Tufts. T and I started an herb garden, which grew wonderfully though we had to leave it behind in August because of California’s plant-import rules (the plants lived both inside and outside. We didn’t plan ahead well.) We took a day trip up to Portsmouth, NH. I watched Caitlin play roller derby. Same-sex marriage became legal, across the board (!!!!). I began the daunting task of sorting through childhood nostalgia, which my dad has been asking me to do for years.

July

2015-july-oob-coffee
2015-july-oob-swings
I visited a friend from college in Philadelphia over July 4th weekend, which was a blast. It’s fun to both play tourist and decidedly not play tourist in a city that’s vitally important to that date. I spent more time sorting through childhood stuff and ate all of the blueberries. T and I went to see Minions. T passed his defense – which was super awesome and exciting not only because, you know, PhD, but also because that meant that the wheels of everything else were getting set in motion, also known as moving to California. July was the month I stressed and stressed about giving notice at work and my family and packing, and then confirmed the moving thing and gave notice and started figuring out what the future was going to maybe look like. I went to Old Orchard Beach with my dad, which has been a thing for as long as I can remember, and it was perfect and quintessentially summer in New England.

August

apt_final
I saw more friends in a two week period than I would have thought possible, which got easier when it turned into a three week period that also included needing to pack up my entire life from my apartment and a decent amount of my life from my parents’ places. I went to yoga. I went to Forge and Diesel way more than I should have for the sake of my wallet, but the part of me that loves good coffee (and the current!me that misses them tremendously) has no regrets about that at all. Colin visited Boston and I got to see him for the first time in over a year. I played tourist on my lunch hour. I worked my last day at the place I worked in Boston and wrote all of the thank you notes and had all of the feelings. I said goodbye to our apartment and goodbye to Eloise in what I thought was a see-you-later but turned out to be more final and that breaks my heart. I left Massachusetts and went on a two-week road trip with T. I haven’t done a good job of putting pictures on here, but my instagram is a good place to get a general pictorial overview. New states this go-round: South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and Oregon. We visited (in order, if not grammatically great) the Badlands and Mount Rushmore and I went camping for the first time and missed Old Faithful but had an awesome time exploring Yellowstone. We saw Jackson Lake and spent time in Jackson Hole, WY (and had awesome coffee).

September

2015-september-portland
2015-september-ca-diesel
2015-september-palm-trees
The roadtrip continued via a two-day detour in Portland, where we drank good beer and good coffee and were overwhelmed – in the best of ways – by books.
We arrived in California! Round one of car stuff survived the move. We unpacked; we made our staying-with-friends housing feel like home, and I made friends with their cats. I applied to a whole lot of jobs and drank a ton of coffee. We explored Las Trampas.

October

2015-october-roadtrip
2015-october-redwoods
I continued applying to all of the jobs. We flew out to MN to pick up my car & marathon drive it back over Columbus Day weekend (which was a very, very pretty drive). I visited/drove through more new states: Iowa, Nebraska, Nevada, and Utah. I finally got to see (and take a terrible picture of) a Welcome to California sign. I got a job (and started said job)! We went to Muir Woods. I turned 26. T took me to the San Francisco Symphony for my birthday.

November

2015-november-del-valle
2015-nov-thanksgiving
We started the month by exploring Del Valle in gorgeous weather. And then we moved into our apartment in mid-November! I’d never realized before this how long it can take a place to come together when all parties involved not only work full time but are also adjusting to new jobs. But the apartment is coming together wonderfully, though November was largely a month of thinking about moving and furniture shopping and unpacking and organizing. In other notable events, I got my CA driver’s license. A friend came out to California on vacation/to visit family, and we went to Napa for the day. I had my first Thanksgiving outside of New England ever, which was weird but also lovely. Around Thanksgiving was the first time I was tangibly aware of not living near the homes I’d always known and I may or may not have had a disproportionately emotional reaction to breaking down a TV box. But! We cooked a successful Thanksgiving dinner together, just the two of us, in our California apartment, and used placemats on the coffee table and sat on the floor, and it was absolutely wonderful. And we only set off the smoke detector a few times (I blame the duck, not us…).

December

2015-dec-trees
2015-dec-cookies
2015-dec-peppy
I worked and we organized the apartment and built IKEA furniture and continued unpacking. We bought a bunch of succulents. And a Rosemary bush in honor of Christmas (?????). I visited Berkeley for the first time with a friend from college, and I learned that parts of Berkeley are wonderful and remind me of Cambridge. Also, brunch is great. That same college friend and I went into the city the weekend before Christmas, and we won: we somehow skipped a crazy long wait at Brenda’s French Soul Food (website) because we were willing to sit at the counter, and we just kind of happened onto it without knowing it was a thing, and YUM. We also managed see a Christmas concert for free by wandering up some stairs after we were unable to walk the labyrinth at Grace Cathedral. And then we saw the Gingerbread House at the Fairmont San Francisco, also without knowing anything about it but wanting to get out of the rain. I started knitting again. I flew home for the holidays, visiting both Boston and my parents/friends for the first time since moving and hanging out with the best cat in the world. I snuggled with my mom and watched the final season of White Collar on DVD, finally. I made Christmas cookies with my dad. I remembered how wonderful all of my friends are (not that I forget, or take that for granted, but sometimes I just…realize in a tangible intangible way).

—

I’ve written nearly 2000 words and I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. This year was wonderful and also more than I possibly would’ve imagined – in all possible ways – at the onset of 2015. I’ve been thinking a lot about what direction I’d like to head towards in 2016, and I don’t have it narrowed down to something concise yet. A number of blogs I read have been focusing on not focusing, and I like that: words of the year I’ve seen have been “enough” and “simple” and the like. And the general mantra seems to be more of x, less of y, and I rather like that a lot.

I’ve (actually really and truly) got a post planned about more words on that, on 2016 and goals or not goals; on words and plans or planning to not plan. But for now, since I have crossed over the 2000 word mark, I would just like to say this: thank you for being a part of my 2015, whether that’s through reading this or through more tangible means. I am looking forward to seeing what 2016 brings.