the crooked path

the crooked path

catching up once again on the reverb10 prompts. it seems like i get more out of them and they feel more connected when i do several at once, so i'm going with it. blogging's cheaper than therapy, remember?

december 18 – try: what do you want to try next year? is there something you wanted to try in 2010? what happened when you did / didn’t go for it?

i think the biggest thing i wanted to try in 2010 was to have a year of not buying things. anything i didn't need - so food would be ok, clothes and shoes not so much. and i have to say that although i became a slightly more conscious consumer, i was an utter failure at not buying things. in fact, in 2010, we bought a new house, a new (used) car and a horse, an iPad and a MacBook Air (damn you apple for your tempting, irresistible products). so it wasn't a very good year as far as keeping that promise went.

husband and i were just discussing the consumer rat race this evening over dinner. we have good salaries and admittedly probably have an above-average income. but we find sometimes that we don't really know where our money goes. and we have so much we want to do with the house that we need to be a whole lot better at that.

i lamented to husband my panicked feeling over the whole christmas gift scene and we talked about next year (always next year) doing only handmade or vintage gifts. or maybe not attaching the whole gift thing so tightly to christmas...just imagine running onto something that's perfect for someone you love, buying it and giving it to them out of the blue, rather than waiting 'til christmas, panic-buying some tat and giving it because you feel you have to. in this day and age, let's face it, if people want something, they get it, they don't wait for a holiday and hope for it, so we don't need gifts in the same way we perhaps once did. so a gift could really take on new meaning and be something really from the heart, if we made it or found just the right thing, whenever that may be. if you think about it, christmas is an arbitrary date anyway, so why should the gift giving especially be then?

i want to consume in a more conscious and thoughtful way in 2011. i want to recycle and upcycle and buy vintage instead of new (following this philosphy, we did that with the car and the house in 2010, so we're not entirely off track). i want the gifts i give to be meaningful and thoughtful and not driven by anxiety.

december 19 – healing:  what healed you this year? was it sudden, or a drip-by-drip evolution? how would you like to be healed in 2011? 

i don't know that i was really that broken in 2010, tho' i think i went through a mild depression brought on by a whole lot of change all at once. i think i'm uncomfortable with the notion that the pervading culture pushes on us all the time that we are broken and need some kind of medicine or book or guru or guide in order to be fixed. i think we just are as we are and that includes bumps and bruises along the way - it's part of the natural order of things. and i resist the notion that i am in constant need of healing.

december 20 – beyond avoidance: what should you have done this year but didn’t because you were too scared, worried, unsure, busy or otherwise deterred from doing? (bonus: will you do it?)

a year ago at this time, i had the chance to try to strike out on my own and live from my own creativity in some fashion or another. and i didn't do it. i let fear get in the way, but i also let a whole lot of other major things get in the way...a move across the country, selling a house, buying another one, a change of lifestyle. and in that process, i didn't dare to also have the uncertainty of starting up on my own and not knowing that i'd have a monthly paycheck of a certain, predictable amount. i think it was a natural fear, but now that so many of those other changes are in place, i'm much more ready now to take those steps into trusting myself and my creativity and my abilities. i think there's no doubt that now i will, even if it is a crooked path ahead, i'm ready for it now.