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Thoughts for a new year

There’s something about January, something that makes it feel as though time is slowing down and the days are beginning to blur into each other, like the weeks are stretching out to be longer and longer while the weekends shrink into barely noticeable pauses in a never-ending string of sameness. It’s always this way, in January. The sparkle of the holidays is gone and the novelty of the season has worn off, but Spring is still so far away; there are still so many flat grey mornings and long black evenings to get through.

Last week I met up for coffee with an old friend from university. We don’t see each other much any more – I’m living here, she’s living there, and our lives are on different paths going in different directions – but once a year I find myself sitting across from her in a crowded coffee shop, cappuccinos in our hands, with that inevitable question hanging there in the air between us: “So, what’s new?”

It’s been a year. I should be able to talk for hours, to fill novels with answers to that question. I should hardly know where to begin. And instead I feel like I’ve been treading water: So much effort, so little progress. What’s new? Not much. Of course, there are the little things. There was my trip to Europe in the fall – the highlight of the year, really, the only time I felt truly alive – and there were moments with friends, achievements at work, certainly enough smiles and contentment and good times to convince people that 2011 was a good year. And all things considered, it was a good year, but good in that vague, imprecise sense – It was good mainly because there was an absence of anything truly bad.

It probably sounds like I’m unhappy. Sometimes I even wonder if I feel unhappy, but I think I’m really just restless, impatient, waiting for that next big step, knowing – at least in part, on some level – what that next big step is, and knowing that now, right now, is not the right time to take it. I’m not one to make lists of detailed, specific resolutions for a new year, but I will paint with broad strokes and imprecise goals: This year will be about moving forward, moving towards this still-blurry idea that’s been hanging in front of me for a while now. This year is going to be an interesting one.