Happy Birthday, Country Joe

There's a Todd Snider song I think of every new year that goes

Happy New Year, everybody
Happy birthday Country Joe
I resolve to do what I always do
I'm not hurting you-oo-oou

It's a funny song and brilliant in the obvious way that Todd Snider tends to be brilliant. Most of us make new year's resolutions and then as the year passes, the resolve fades. At the end of the year, we are the same.

The past couple of years--actually since the year Amelia was conceived and then born, 2009--I have been attending a yoga workshop on New Year's Day. Except not 2010, for obvious reasons (newborn). They have been at different yoga studios with different focuses but the general theme has been the same--a time to set an intention for the new year. Overall, these classes have truly helped me consider and decide what I want to focus on for the year, and since most yoga classes begin with setting an intention, I tend to remember my intention often throughout the year.

The very first year, the yoga teacher had us write out a letter to ourselves, one she would send to us in six months. The letter was supposed to describe, in present tense, the life we were now leading, one that was helping us reach our goals for the new year. On January 1, 2009, I was TTC. If you've never had the pleasure of obsessively searching the internet for early pregnancy symptoms, that's chatroom-speak for "Trying To Conceive." I had also been encouraged my a teacher to send off my poems to literary journals. So in my letter, I was pregnant, blissfully so, and on my bookshelf was the journal containing my first published poem.

By the time my letter came in the mail, it was true. Well, pretty much. I was 5 months pregnant (the nausea was not part of my plan, but I suppose that's beside the point in the grand scheme of the universe) and my first poem(S!) had been accepted by literary journals. It was a long time before they were actually on my bookshelf, but I have since found that the most exciting part of being published is not actually getting the journal in your hand. (At least to me. I like the part where I read the acceptance email.)

My lovely yoga studio in Denver, Karma Yoga Center, has offered New Year's Day workshops the last couple of years, and I took them in 2011 and 2012. They focused on vision boards rather than letters, a more abstract and artistic form of setting out a plan for your year. In 2011, my word was "evolve" (see above). My vision board was oval--think Georgia O'Keefe flowers--and around the oval I copied a prose poem I had written about giving birth. My goal for the year was amorphous. As you may have noticed from reading this blog, the transition to motherhood was a big one for me, and in 2011, I wanted to open space for parts of my life that that transition had temporarily closed. I wanted to evolve to someone who was a mother AND. Like a mother and a writer, a mother and someone who went to yoga. In 2011, I wrote my first post-motherhood poems, took some writing workshops, and even did a 3-month unlimited yoga stint, which got me back on track to a regular practice. 

In 2012, my word was "publish." I wanted, in short, to publish my manuscript of poems. To that end, I picked a word that felt bold, specific, and concrete. In 2012, my book was not published. But I did send it off many times, revise it, and by the end of the year, I made a dramatic change that I hope will still result in publication. It has been a goal for so long that at this point I feel like the question is not if, but when. That in itself seems like reaching a goal. Plus, I have started a brand new manuscript.

(The "i" is really small, just to the right of the H's left line. I am not a visual artist. 

But I did make it look like a book that folds open.)

For 2013, I planned to go to the same workshop. I was not sure what my word was going to be, or what I wanted to put on my vision board. But I was going to go.

Then, Amelia got sick.

I once read an interview with Sarah McLaughlin in which she describes motherhood as "relentless." Amelia was JUST SICK! Anyway, on New Year's Day, Amelia had a fever, a cough and a runny nose. She was a sad little bear, one who wanted her mama, and ONLY her mama, to wipe her nose, "pet" her, and sit beside her on the couch all day watching Caillou. So that is what I did. I could have gone to the class--Dean rallied to get me to go--but I was exhausted from spending half the night in Amelia's room, Dean was sick himself, and Amelia was downright pitiful. I have learned that sometimes the yoga is in not going to yoga. Not to say I was happy about how it turned out--it was not a fun first day of the year--but that's how it all went down. So at the end of the day on January 1, 2013, instead of feeling centered and focused, I felt grouchy and spent.

Then, yesterday, I got an email from a yoga teacher I had in DC, Naomi. She wrote this post on her blog describing the "365 day challenge," or the idea of reaching a goal by committing to a single concrete action every day. For example, if you want to practice more yoga, you say, "I will do yoga every day" rather than "I will do more yoga." She takes the idea further, considering what one might commit to each week and each month.

These ideas crystallized something for me. Rather than choosing a word for this year, I decided to consider my goals in terms of what I can do each day, each week, and each month. Here is what I've come up with so far:

What can I do every day?

Read a poem. For years--literally years--one of goals has been to "read more." Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't. But if I commit, I know I can read a poem a day. I can do this while you-know-who is busy for the moment, in the early morning, while something simmers on the stove, or sometime during the lovely quiet of the evening.

Read the news. I often feel uninformed about yet overwhelmed by current events. But I check my email every day, so there is no reason I can't at least skim the NYT headlines rather than deleting them in defeat.

Exercise. Because of a recurrence of my mysteriously high blood pressure, I have been exercising most mornings since late December (I know, not that long). I have been doing cardio videos from huluplus that last about 20 minutes. I want to keep doing these or around 20 minutes of yoga a day. But even if I can only get in 5 minutes, I want to exercise every day.

What can I do every week?

Start a new poem. I have actually thought of several new poems lately. Committing to begin one every week will help me flesh out my ideas and get me to sit down at my computer, which often results in a longer writing session.

Write in the afternoons, outside of the house. I have been doing this anyway, at a bookstore or museum or the like. It adds a new writing session to my routine.

Exercise for 50 minutes or more. I did a 50 minute cardio-kickboxing video this morning and I feel great. Or I could go on a run. I know I can't do 50 minutes every day, but I can amp it up once a week.

Read for pleasure. Like sit down in a soft chair and relax. Again, I know I am not going to do this every day, but I can certainly do it once a week.

Try a new recipe. We are in a dinnertime rut. And I just got a slow cooker, which I love. 

What can I do every month?

Go on an artist date. This idea of Julia Cameron's means you take yourself somewhere fun without the goal of producing anything. I can't remember the last time I did this. I want to do it again.

Write a post on my new blog. It's not ready to release, but it's something that has been in the works for a long time. When it's ready to share, I'll post!

Reassess. By now I know how unexpected changes feel like wrenches in the plans. I don't want to let one missed day or week throw me off track, but at the same time, I want to continue considering what my goals are and how I am best reaching them.

Happy new year, everybody, and happy birthday, Country Joe, whoever you are. Here's to a year of hope and to creating the lives we want to lead.

June

On New Year's Day, I took a yoga/art workshop dedicated to setting intentions for the new year. After a yoga flow session, students made collages that depicted goals or hopes for 2011.

Each participant was given a square of poster paper. There were plenty of magazines, markers, crayons, pastels, glue, glitter, feathers, old calendars, postcards, and who knows what else to go around. The room had the feel of an elementary school art classroom, happy with chatter and creation. I, however, had a hard time getting started.

For one thing, I went through a collage phase in college (ha! no near pun intended) and I wasn't in the mood to cut and paste. I had, though, come to the workshop with some vague intentions in mind, as well as a deep belief in the power of setting intentions. In 2009, I went to a similar New Year's Day workshop in DC. In that one, we wrote letters to ourselves, to be mailed to us by the instructor in 6 months, that described our lives 6 months later. The idea was to describe in present tense the life that you wanted to be living 6 months later. That year, Dean and I had just decided to have a baby and I was sending off poems to journals, but so far had only received rejections. In my letter to myself, I was pregnant and holding the journal that held my first published poem. When I found the letter in my mailbox in late June, I was 5 months pregnant. The journal that contained my first published poem was on my bookshelf, within easy reach.

Because of one of 2009's attained set intentions--guess which one--I couldn't make it to a New Year's Day workshop in 2010. But I did in 2011, and I knew I wanted a year of change. First and foremost, I wanted more sleep. I wanted more time for yoga, more time for writing, and more time for myself in general. I knew I was going to wean sometime in 2011, and I knew I was going to think about looking for work in the fall. In general, I was hoping that 2011 would be a year of finding footing in the world of motherhood, of making room in my life for the things that had defined me before Amelia came along and became the center of my universe.

In the weeks before the 2011 workshop, I had been writing a prose poem about Amelia's birth. Some lines from the poem were floating through my head. I decided to write/rewrite the poem on my poster paper. First I cut into into a more oval shape. Think O'Keefe flowers--I was writing about birth here. And then I wrote the poem in the same oval shape. On top of it all, I wrote the a word in large block letters. I colored in some of the letters and pasted paper over others. The word was EVOLVE.

June is a rich month, sun and flowers and early summer harvest. It is the month I was married. It is the sixth month of the year, a halfway point, the perfect time to pause and consider or reconsider intentions for the year.

My plan for June is to write one blog post a day. I don't have any particular theme in mind for the posts--I won't always be writing about setting intentions, although this did seem like a good place to start--it's just that I have finished up some fairly major projects in May, not least of which was finishing my poetry manuscript and sending it off to several contests, and I would like to get back to the blog for awhile.

I have some other goals in mind too. In June, I want to

1. Drink more water. I realized I go through the day feeling thirsty a lot. (A note to Mom: I don't think it's diabetes.) I think I'm just thirsty. Denver is dry and I am busy.

2. Read more. My plan for Amelia's naptimes in June are to write on the blog and then read. I want to read both poetry and fiction. I started a Goodreads account a couple of years ago I would like to get back to too.

3. And with #2 in mind, I am setting a cleaning limit for myself in June. I have been feeling like I fritter away too much time straightening the house. It becomes a creative block, almost, a way for me to avoid sitting down to write. So in June, I am allowed to straighten up after breakfast and to do whatever chores seem most urgent for 10 minutes, and only 10 minutes, after Amelia goes down for her nap. I am going to set the timer. If Amelia happens to be entertaining herself throughout the day, I can do small things then too, but that's pretty hit or miss.

And forth, I would like to exercise more. I have been going to yoga much more often and even running, although that's more sporadic. In June I am going to try to do one or the other every day.

It will be interesting to see how this goes, since I often don't feel like writing until everything is neat. And the truth is I really hate running. On top of all that, we are spending most of June 1st on a plane. So we'll see.

In the manuscript class I just finished, the instructor talked a lot about closure, about the importance of finishing a project, even if it wasn't as perfect as you'd hoped. The great thing about letting something go, he said, is that you get to see what you're going to do next. The month of May was for me a definite time of closure--I sent the manuscript off, I weaned Amelia--so I feel that this summer is a kind of beginning. All this reminds of some lines from a poem by T.S. Eliot:

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.

Beginning or end, I am excited to see what happens next.