Car wash songs

We meet again, 12/18 and I.

This year, I went from questionably employed to having a juggling act of jobs. I’m grateful for all of them. I returned to the college classroom as professor, not student. I walked into the gym in the navy blazer, not the leotard or the warm-up jacket (though certainly there was plenty of the latter, too). I re-dabbled in journalism, that old chestnut. I gained an office and also started watching The Office, which means that my Dundie Award has a loving home.

My gymnasts made me especially proud this year. All-around champions in abundance. State and regional victories. Two weekends ago, their first-ever first place trophy as a team. Every day, their humor, their resistance, their successes, their incessant commentary that rolls the story along.

I survived air travel post-blizzard, which is more difficult than you’d expect. A fall journey brought me back to a Spanish-speaking land, place of my roots, and although I am not from there nor from that language, it felt right. Sometimes I think that your roots choose you.

There was a great deal of soul-searching. I felt bitter for a while, or maybe a watered-down version of the emotion. But still, I did not look well upon some aspects of the past until recently. Then it loosened. The water broke through.

I finally did that thing I claimed I wanted to do, which was to run ten miles, and it was a pretty horrendous experience. I was trained and ready, but sometimes, it comes down to the day and an overabundance of Gatorade post-race. But I rebounded. I still run. Maybe even farther in this coming year.

There were small successes in my publishing world. I finished the story of Katie/Savannah and continue the story of Nick in Mexico, walking the streets at night in search of the right words.

Right now I am having my typical anxiety about aging (let’s not forget the mental drama when I went from nineteen to twenty), but as always, I feel the old age slipping away like the snakeskin, outgrown, ready now for the new rawness.