It's 2009!

[chanaleh]

2008 seems to have been a weird/tough/transitional year for a lot of people.

Two years ago, at the beginning of 2007, I was living with gnawing uncertainty in my love life and a certain amount of misery in my professional life. Over the next several months, I quit the job and got engaged to my heart's joy. :-) So, 2007 was a year of fairly radical shifts for the better.

One year ago, I was thrilled to be gainfully self-employed (though beginning to feel that a more steady income stream would be useful again), and we were trying to settle on a wedding venue, among other such details.

The wedding itself (in August, for those just tuning in; see also new userpic!) came off pretty much as planned -- as much as such things ever can, I guess! And despite all the low-grade trauma of planning and organizing, it turned out to be an amazing festival of love and joy. So in that sense, the biggest event of 2008 was a bringing to fruition: a long-awaited culmination of all the invested care and work and love and hope that went before it. (And no, of course, I'm not just talking about the events of the celebration, here.)

The same could, on a slightly smaller scale, be said of the release of Honorable Menschen's debut CD By the River in December. :-)

But in other ways, this twelvemonth has taken paths I couldn't have predicted. Principally, I found myself taking a job that was rather a detour from my established (book-publishing) career, but that has proven to be an amazing fit drawing on the full range of my strengths, from aesthetic to intellectual to technical to interpersonal.

And there have been other surprises along the way, ranging from the subtle to the profound. For instance, in terms of plot intrigue, it's fair to note that ablock and kalessin both acquired awesome girlfriends. ;-) It's been a year of new and/or deepening friendships on many counts, for which I am grateful, and occasionally (still) utterly amazed.

Maybe that's all that we need is to meet in the middle of impossibility:
Standing at opposite poles, equal partners in a mystery.


Goals and aspirations for 2009:

1. Finish my wedding thank-you notes. X-)
   
2. Fulfill my freelance commitments from last fall, and figure out whether and how much I want to pursue/accept this year. (This, like the above, had better be a short-term goal rather than a long-term one, but it's heavy on my mind right now.)
   
3. Continue working with ablock, brass_rat and friends on transitioning tremontstshul tasks off my personal shoulders and into Google Docs a more central/automated repository. -- Oh yeah, and maybe on planning another trip to Israel, as well. :-)
   
4. Do a show this spring, if I can. (theatreatfirst auditions for The Winter's Tale in January; mitgsp for Iolanthe in February. Pity they're not the other way around, as I am really only eager to do Io A THIRD TIME if I can have a named role. But, whatever. We'll see.) Failing that, hopefully in the summer. 'Cause after that, who knows when I will next have the chance?
   
5. Do more dancing. Every year I say this, but still. :-) Contras (at MIT and/or in Concord), swing (I'm still dying to learn Lindy hop)... modern, again, maybe...
   
6. Make an appointment with a new therapist.
   
7. Overhaul my own website, probably to include moving it off The World once and for all. (End of an era. I feel bad for them, but they just can't compete, really. They're a holdover. *sigh*)
   
8. Clean out the sinkhole that is my home office in the back bedroom. (In preparation either for moving, or for Not Moving, or for... otherwise reorganizing the household. ;-)
   
9. Nurture and grow into this new shared existence, so that my sense of "our life" becomes as strong and trustworthy as my sense of "my life".
   
10. Stay rooted in the present while we wait to see what twists the path of this year will take.
    
11. Spend time in good and productive ways with all my various loved ones.
    
12. Use my powers only for good and never for evil.


A January calendaring entry is in the works, hopefully sometime this weekend.
Shabbat shalom, y'all.

Comments

[gilana]

I would love to go swing dancing! Don't really know contra, but I'd be up for trying it. Let me know if you're up for company for either. Or salsa...

[debka-notion.livejournal.com]

I didn't know you did swing- how delightful.

[laurion]

Nice to know I'm not the only one still finishing wedding thank you notes.

[mbarr.livejournal.com]

Hmm... if you guys did an israel trip... when would it be?



BTW- tentative plans for something tomorrow night. The doing of things, at least. open minded, so far have y&s..

[rifmeister.livejournal.com]

Let me know if you need any info about swing/lindy hop, etc.

[alandd.livejournal.com]

http://www.danceboston.com/ - my ex is addicted to this stuff; I took lessons for 2+ years before we split up...

I MIGHT be convinced to join once or twice for some beginner lessons (which I used to be able to GIVE, but that was 3ish years ago)...

[oneagain.livejournal.com]

There is a new swing dance series starting January 14th at MIT with Andrew K. Stein. He does 6 count primarily, that's closer to East Coast than Lindy, but G likes him so we'll be starting this series again. persis and aristabulus are likely going to meet up with us at MIT before each lesson for dinner or somesuch. The lessons as well as the following dances are free. Anyone who wants to join us is more than welcome...

[wellstar.livejournal.com]

That's a great icon. I love it. It's like a scene from a movie. Except it's totally real!

[mycroft.livejournal.com]

Contra and swing are both fun. Depending on what you're looking for, you could also try Tech Squares. I'd love to dance with you some time. :-)

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

Why do you feel The World can't compete? Just curious... I'm still happy with their service.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

Israel trip: The last I heard about the idea (rather too inchoate to be called "plan"), it sounded like over the summer sometime, probably meaning July or August. (Incidentally, the TigerParents are going in April-May, and I was sort of envisioning briefly that we and/or others might go at the same time, but now that's seeming unlikely to come together.)

Really, the only person who seems to be making much headway on the Israel Trip 2.0 idea thus far is awhyzip, and we should all sit down together and talk actual planning at some point. :-) What timeframe would you be interested in? I know you originally were talking about going, like, this winter. But I assume you haven't made any plans as yet either, and that nothing is happening for you before Lunacon in any case...!

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

Well, I completely gave up using them for mail in 2004 when I got sick of messages disappearing into the ether. When we moved into our current apartment in 2006, we got a cable modem, so between that and webmail, my need for dialup has been totally obviated. That leaves webhosting, which, these days, I can get elsewhere (a) cheaper and (b) more intuitive to navigate.

YMMV, of course. :-) Nothing against them, directly; they've always been responsive when I had issues.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

I don't exactly "do swing" in any meaningful sense, but I like it, as I like doing most forms of dancing. :-)

We stopped by the tail end of the swing dancing at [Boston's] First Night, and it was fun... although (a) it's hard to dance in snow boots, and (b) we tend to exhaust our mutual repertoire of moves in about 16 measures. I don't think I've done swing with anyone more experienced since the time lonebear visited some 4 years ago, at the Cambridge VFW, of blessed memory.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

Well, I hear there's some at MIT. ;-) I just now signed myself up for the mailing list, actually.

And I found this list, but if you have other suggestions/recommendations/whatever, I'm interested.

[debka-notion.livejournal.com]

*grins* So you've done some swing- you just don't know a lot of it yet. I have a rather long list of dance-styles that seem like fun that I haven't learned yet, too.

Sounds like a great time.

[rifmeister.livejournal.com]

MIT is good, because it's conveniently located and free. For more serious lessons, I recommend It's All Swing. The good dances are Monday night in the church next to the Sheraton Commander in H^2, Wednesdays at MIT, and Fridays near Central.

If you're interested in blues dancing, which is sort of swing dancing meets dirty dancing, a good way to get started is to go to Johnny D's on a Sunday. There's a beginner lesson at 3:45, and then live blues music.