Sending out 2012

Bless me, followers, for I have sinned. It's it's been five months since my last post.

It has been a hard year, friends. And a lot has changed since July 8th, when I was complaining about moving to Saint Paul. We have since settled into our small apartment in a beautiful section of the city. And when I say "settled in" of course I mean that our books are continuously scattered everywhere, and we have broken many kitchen glasses accidentally.

I do so love living in Saint Paul. I have a writing group that meets every few weeks or so, and sometimes I even do the writing assignments we come up with at the end of our time together. Which is not to say I have been writing a lot--I haven't been.

In fact, one of my goals for the year was to write 250 poems, and I'll be lucky if I close in on 100 poems for the year by the end of December, which is just a little more than a week away. I had several other goals for the year, involving my running a half marathon (nope), getting into at least one top-tier journal (nope), and putting together another chapbook (nope). But just because I didn't meet these goals doesn't mean that I wasted my year, I think.

I have spent a good deal of the last month or two really focusing on myself. I joined a magical yoga studio and started noticing muscles in my body I didn't know I had. I have been breathing through stress, and I finally feel like I am rewarding my body instead of just punishing it for eating too many cookies. I have also been thinking a lot about the people I'm blessed to call friends and family. Sometimes we learn too late to tell people every day that we love them.

Christmas is coming up, and New Years, and I know I don't own the monopoly on advice-giving, but this is the only piece I have: be good to each other. Be good to strangers. Tell and show people that you love them. The end of the year always gets me a little reflective, and I apologize for not being funny in this post. But sometimes I have to just allow myself to be honest, and this is what I have been thinking about for the past few months.

Be good to yourself. Be good to each other.