Begin.
For some reason, my path has found me on this side of the coin instead of food-wandering - although there's been lots of that recently: tapas nights, stellar craft brews (there is, I've learned, such thing as a Chocolate Milk Stout, which should probably not work, but certainly does) and card games, stories over hot pot in Uptown basements painted lemon yellow with signage I could only grasp at weak straws to read - food and literacy are two loves of mine, and there's a post in and of itself somewhere, there: senses and language barriers and learning to trust your nose (and your friends.) Lots of thoughts and never enough time to write them down?
Something like that; still a little haunted by how the Cracked article (is Cracked ever SFW?) that drifted onto my Twitter feed about six hard truths left one solid impression: every minute you spend taking in someone else's media/effort/work is time not spent on yours. It's worth keeping in mind, as both of these blogs put together don't quite hit the 2/month goal I'd set at the start of the year, and it's something I'd still like to work towards.
On the upside, I did climb three mountains this year! And, M - I'm not even counting Heart as more than one peak despite its fifteen-or-so summits. ^_~
A good friend also challenged me to write about my first city; the city we shared for twenty-odd years, and its legendary winters; eleven days from the deadline and my pen is stalling. I've realized that for all that winter tinged a lot of my writing, none of it was directly about my city - nothing is, except the half-finished NaNo work that I started in Japanland and pushed into bloom over the first November of my return about art galleries and friendship and noodle bars and magicians-of-sorts in a city that was Edmonton-but-not. I'll tackle it soon, but it won't be in the next week; the piece is unedited and at least 30,000 words too long to submit. Still, I'm just about ready, though I fear one of my protagonists won't survive the re-visioning. Sometimes, you grow out of characters, just as you grow out of socks, or bands, or heroes: you see the world differently, or you just don't quite fit, anymore.
(which is where this Metric song fits in: seeing them again at Osheaga this summer was like seeing an ex-lover who you don't love anymore, but who you're happy to see doing well. There's something to the restlessness in this song that gets at me, and oh, something bittersweet there, too.)
I think that my problem with starting something new, on the other hand, is that winter doesn't seem real here, despite the snow flurries that peppered my windows at work today, or the Technicolour light display in the windows of houses down the street. With green grass still flourishing, it's hard to remember what cold feels like. But the downtown rink is open; maybe this weekend, when life slows down enough to see it straight-on I'll lace up my skates and slip slowly around the ice. In a hockey family, I was the black sheep who stayed inside and broke boards all winter, but there's something to the movement of skating itself that I'm hoping is a clue; a cue; a key.
Here's to remembering; here's to staying warm and keeping cool. Here's to the holidays; to the time when, as a wiser woman than I once said that hope is currency. Take care, and best wishes for your 2013, where-ever it may find you.
(don't forget - don't forget I love, I love, I love you.)
♥music of the moment: breathing underwater (see video above.)
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