I saw Silent Light this week, where I learned that some people move too slow even for me. Adulterous Mennonites have huge pores, as I know having spent long, agonizing moments contemplating them. It’s possible to linger over everything for longer than you thought possible, which is an idea I like better in retrospect than I did in the theater. It’s a beautiful movie, but uncomfortable, because everything becomes super amplified. 

I finally faced facts today and bought snow boots for the first time in my life. Snow is wet, I’ve determined, and ice is slippery, and because this is true I now have footwear adequate for coping with this reality. Why does it take me so very long to come to grips with very basic ideas? I do not know. 

In a burst of New Year idealism, I have decided to organize my collection of index cards. Jasper helped. 

I’ve spent the week thinking about what I can control and what I can’t, and what a great relief it is to not to have to control absolutely everything. 

I remembered on the train today that once upon a time I had an enormous list of rules for every contingency. A literal list! 

I mean, I was kidding, sort of, but really! 

I think it was the nice catholic girl in me. 

I sent a copy of the list to the person who said the above to me. I don’t think she got it. 

We had a very awkward dinner a few years ago. 

I think she was under the impression that because I wasn’t married and hadn’t given birth that I was leading a much more exciting life than I actually have. 

Or that I was crazy, one or the other. Perhaps both. 

It’s uncomfortable to be in the middle of a conversation with someone and realize they’re not speaking to you, they’re speaking to a projection of the character they’ve made of you in their head. 

This past year has been particularly good to me; I’m hoping that my luck holds for awhile. 

I dislike New Year’s as an Enforced Fun kind of holiday, but I love how people all of a sudden reevaluate their lives. People dump their partners, start regimens, people leave town, quit their jobs, resolve that the future will be different. We’re boldly moving forward, right now. I like the dramatic rise in expectations. I think it’s funny how people expect change to happen all at once, all of a sudden, in one fell swoop. How you can declare that change has already happened, without taking the time to make things different, which of course takes a lot longer than it does to make a statement or adopt some rhetoric. What does it take to live the life you want? A flood of action which leaves purposes way behind it! If you use the right language, it’s real. I used to work with someone who deliberately embraced this idea, and was convinced that if you spoke as if something were true, then it would really happen. This is either brilliant or psychotic, and I’m still not entirely sure which. 

I think it’s fascinating how talking about and around change is more seductive than making it happen. Because most things change at a glacier pace; you can work towards things, but only at the speed of dripping cold molasses. And you usually can only sort of approach change, not actually get there, like a horizon line or a mathematical limit. And we’re not used to things operating at that kind of pace.

It’s why I like learning how to do things the slow way, learning how to dig in. It’s good to learn more about how to have patience, in case you might need it.