Out with the old year (decade!), in with the new. Hello, 2020.

I have a life-long cycle of getting overloaded with commitments (especially around the holidays, of course) and then getting so stressed that I get through everything by shutting down, gritting my teeth, and surviving. Then when it's over, it takes a couple of weeks to recover.

In the past, I've tried to manage this by cutting back on commitments, but then I get bored and depressed. This year was definitely not a bored and depressed year. I think we had two evenings at home during the two weeks before Christmas. I was completely brain dead by Christmas day. I'm starting to think that I just need to accept that this is my normal cycle, and I should figure out how to manage it instead of trying to change it. It's not like this is a surprise--the holidays are busy and stressful for everyone.

For me, managing holiday stress for sure means scheduling time off after Christmas, and this year we were able to do that. I was totally on auto-pilot by the time Christmas rolled around, but during our week of vacation I could feel myself coming back to life. We had a great time with our kids and their partners, played a lot of cards, watched a lot of football/golf/movies, and walked on the beach. Can't ask for much more from a vacation.

I also got some reading done-- wouldn't be a good vacation without a stack of books-- including one more five-star read for 2019, Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts. The title makes complete sense once you've read the book, but I think it's also misleading.

There is a ghost, sort of, but it's not really a ghost story, and it's certainly not a horror book. The blurb also mentions a treasure hunt, and although there is a treasure hunt, it's not the focus of the story and really it only has two steps. A lot of the negative reviews are about people's disappointment on those two fronts. But if you want a story of a bunch of misfits who are dealing with grief and not fitting in with a major dose of snarkiness, it delivers in spades. I loved it.

So now it's 2020. I've told you before I don't do New Year's resolutions (because I always fail at them), but I do usually have a theme, and this year it is pay attention. I've done this before, and it's always just something that pops into my head during the first week of the new year. I don't bother defining it any more than the phrase, because part of the whole thing is figuring out what it means as the year goes by.

The other intention I set for myself this year is to start investigating how we can cut down on single-use plastic. I gave up on paper towels in one moment when I walked into the restroom at our local movie theater and noticed that there were more paper towels stuffed in the trash for that one night than we would use at our house in a couple of months. Maybe the whole year.

Cutting down on plastic is probably more important anyway. I quit buying bottled water three (four?) years ago (partly because PellMel lectured me about it--I love learning from my kids). I quit buying apples at Costo, where they come in a large, molded plastic clamshell. But I've never done much more than that.  Up until last year, we could recycle plastic, so it didn't seem too horrible. But last year our county stopped taking plastic for recycling, and there are no other options for recycling in our community. So, will be working on this. Please share if you have any ideas.

Hope you survived the holidays with your sanity intact. My third intention for the year (start writing shorter blog posts) is apparently already shot to hell. Have a great day.

7ToF: Ding-a-Ling

1. I waited awhile to tell you about this to make sure I was going to stick with it, but I have a new hobby. Avocation. Fun thing to do. Back in February, a friend of mine invited/coerced/strong-armed me into join a New Horizons band, an organization devoted to giving senior citizens the opportunity to play in a concert band. Our local group is not just seniors, it's open to anyone interested. Skill levels range widely, from people who are quite accomplished but haven't played in years to people who know music but are learning a new instrument to people who have no prior experience at all.

2. The first night I was there, I was one of six flute players--which is four too many if you ask me-- and also the music was ....basic. But I've always secretly wished I was a drummer. So it occurred to me that I could learn a new instrument. I talked to the director, and later to the percussion section leader, and it turns out that all of their percussionists hate playing the bells. I can read bell music, and voilà, I am becoming a bell player.

3. It is so fun. If you haven't picked up a totally new hobby recently, I highly recommend it. You make new friends, it wakes up your brain, you learn a new skill. What's the downside?

4. But the funny thing is, I had to really push myself to make it happen. I worked up the courage to go talk to the conductor, which was hard enough. Then she wanted me to try clarinet, since they had a shortage of clarinet players. But I have no desire to play clarinet, just drums. So I had to push through my obliger feelings of I should fill the role they need me to fill, and get up the courage (again) to say, no, I really want to play the drums. It's surprising how hard that was to do. It literally felt like I was pushing through my reluctance to go against expectations.

5. But I did it, and now I'm taking private lessons once a week and going to band rehearsal once a week. The other drummers have been amazingly supportive and patient. So far, I've mainly played the bells, although I've filled in on crash cymbals and slapstick and triangle a time or two. I am learning to play snare drum, but since I have zero skills there, it's a much slower process than bells, where I have flute music-reading skills and long-neglected keyboard skills to draw on.

6. A strange feature of this is how weird it feels to publicly display my incompetence. I think probably most of us at midlife have stopped doing things we're not good at. It's a very strange feeling, and not one I like, to openly display my meager skills. But there I am every week at my lesson, stumbling through various exercises and simple songs. A weekly lesson in humility. As someone wise said, in order to learn to be good at something, you have to be willing to do it badly--and that's exactly where I am.

7. Wednesday we had our first concert since I joined. It was outdoors at a local historical home. They serve "free" ice cream on the Fourth of July (donations requested), so there were two hundred-ish people there for the ice cream to listen to us play various patriotic and nostalgic songs. It was really fun, and I managed to not embarrass myself. I forgot to tell Dean to take a picture, but here are my bells (on loan from the band, but I think I've convinced him to get me a set for my birthday).

So if you've got a secret longing to learn to weave, or make birdhouses, or bake bread, maybe now is the time to push through and do it.

Have a great weekend.

you have to start small, like oak trees.

I love a good road trip, always have. One of the main reasons I love them is because you have time to think. We've been so busy for the past few months that I got behind on my thinking. So when the opportunity came to drive to Seattle last week to retrieve PellMel, I jumped at the chance. Really, she could have driven herself, but I wanted to do it. Two of my dearest friends live in Seattle, for one thing, and there's all that time in the car.

It was a lot of fun. PellMel and I had a great time bopping around downtown Seattle, we had some great food, we had lots of fun with our friends Laurel and Kami. But also, thankfully, I had lots of time to think.

And you know what I realized? Almost like a voice said it in my head: I am done blogging.

I think I've known it for awhile, but I'm a stubborn person, and I didn't want to be a quitter. This blog has never really taken off, and I didn't want to give up on it.

My previous, more successful blog was fairly anonymous, but this one is not. And one of the things that happens when you tell people you have a blog is that you start getting feedback. Most people are completely uninterested--in fact, they look slightly panicked when you tell them you have a blog, because you might expect them to actually read the thing. And then there are the few, my beloved readers--you--who are supportive, and make it all worthwhile.

But there is also a third group, whose voices sometimes sound loudest in my head, who react with criticism or disdain, or who are so stunned and surprised that it's a little insulting, or who can't understand why I think anyone would want to read something I'd written. Or the woman who said with great warmth and kindness, "I remember when I used to have time to do things like that." She didn't pat me on the head, so there's that.

And those responses made me stubborn. Even though I've wanted to quit several times over the past few months, I didn't want to prove the negative people right. I didn't want this blog to fail. So I kept going.

Finally, when I had the time to think these past few days, I realized that I can't let the naysayers make my decision for me. If I'm done, I'm done. Maybe after more than a dozen years of blogging (my first post was in December of 2003), it's time to move on.

So *hiccup* this might be my last real post (see postscript below). It's possible this is a temporary decision, but at the moment, I'm pretty sure it will be permanent. I had three or four posts planned for the next couple of weeks, but once the idea of stopping took hold, it seemed kind of pointless to continue. 

I am forever grateful to those of you who have followed along. Hugs and love and happy trails.

p.s. There may be one more post after this one--when I have time to put it together-- with links to the posts from this blog that I think are worth reading, sort of like an index, but it won't have anything new. So if you're subscribed, you can safely unsubscribe without missing anything.

p.p.s. the post title is from the end of The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett. It seemed better to end by looking forward.