2010 Redux

Old school Delta blues, Charles Simic, Sanuk (non-)shoes and Christmas lights. These are some semi-random things that I have dug or have moved me in 2010.

This is the time of year where you simultaneously look backward at the year ending and forward, trying to peek in, wonder about, get a taste of or shape the year to come. For the moment, I'm gonna look back.

2010 brought for me a new job, writing for the Coast Guard and commuting to Washington, D.C.

It brought second and third grade and pre-k and kindergarten, field hockey and soccer and swimming in the deep end over the summer--the end of all floaties.

It was an uneventful year for running and longboarding (chronicling such being the genesis of this blog), with just a trail half-marathon and a road 10-miler in terms of races, but 2010 saw three Rise Up Runners qualify for the Boston Marathon and RUR co-founder Landy run a sub-3:00 hour marathon.

2010 caught The Dead Weather and W.S. Merwin live and took in Washington Nationals and Baltimore Ravens games.

2010 brought a renewed interest in and examination of faith, with a new pastor, Kevin Kinsey, at our church and reading Thomas Merton and Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama.

For reading, it brought Merwin and Simic and Tony Hoagland, Franz Wright and C.D. Wright, Matthew Lippman, John D'Agata and David Shields, Saul Williams, Terrance Hayes and circled back around to Robert Hass. 2010 discovered The Rumpus and the lyric essay.

2010 brought with it words like melanoma and miscarriage and walked past them without stopping (years can be like that). It saw family and friends leave us, though they stick with us long beyond any given year.

It saw sweatsuit and costume parties and friends turn 40 and a summer full of beaches and swimming and some stand-up paddleboarding.

2010 has seen a new dog join our family, the girls lose baby teeth, our "new room" get put together and the full spectrum of holidays cruise by.

And now 2010 has left us, the calendar says, and it will take me a solid month to remember to write 2011 on things. But time is a lot more fluid and a lot less segmented than our calendars and clocks would have us believe. Yesterday is like today is like tomorrow in that the sun, we think, will come up and we do what we do for the days and subsequent nights.

The key, when we can, is to approach each day, week, month, year as a gift in and of itself and dig them and do them and savor them. I try to remind myself of that every morning. So I'll wrap this rant up with a quote from Phineas Flynn (of Phineas and Ferb fame), who I can hear in the other room, who treats every day as "the best day ever" and who every morning comes up with a unique creative idea and says, "Ferb, I know what we're going to do today (or this year)!"

Well, I don't, yet, but can't wait to find out.