Roots.

If I've stated it once, I've stated it a hundred thousand times: I don't like the New Year's Celebration.  I don't like New Years Eve, I think it's a silly, arbitrary holiday with silly, arbitrary traditions (see Dick Clark, ball dropping, etc).  I don't like the idea of setting oneself up for failure with unrealistic (and silly and arbitrary) resolutions.

I have posted on the New Year, and New Years Resolutions before.. I've written about love and survival in these posts.  But this year is different for me.  This year I've spent time thinking about where I am, who I am, and most importantly how I came to be both where and who I am. 

And what I realized, after some time, is that I've strayed away from my roots.  Or rather, that I wanted to get back in touch with my roots - those things that make me me, those things that I have maybe lost touch with over the past couple of years.  So I set about discovering (rediscovering?), determining, identifying, and finally gathering close those aforementioned things.  

In the process of doing so, I slowly began to understand that this was/is supposed to be the year of reclamation.  I came to the understanding that what I have let slip away from me are the fundamentals- the core beliefs and meanings- of who I am.  And in order to get that back, it means boldly embracing everything I have loved over time:

Nature. 

Nature in all of it's Norwegian (read slightly sadistic) glory.

The wind.  The sea.  The sky.  The Earth. 

The music at which I now cringe...

(the grammatical errors which would have seen me end the previous with a dangling participle)

My belief in childlike adoration of wonder. 

Wonder. 

Everything that can be good, graceful, and real. 

Honesty. 

Provocation. 

Blunt. Ness. 

Dedication. 

The written word.  

The written word. On this last point a quick note.  Over this past year I have not given as much of myself or my time to what I consider the most important expression.  I could laugh it off and/or blame my new pursuit of a BS in Environmental Science (it's a time suck to which I have dedicated myself with a begrudging zeal).  To honor honesty, however, I've been stuck.  My words have been stuck somewhere outside of me.  Without access to them, I've been staring.  I stared at blank pages.  I stared at myself, I stared at my fingers, sitting still on a keyboard.  I stared at the blinking cursor, taunting me to reach.  

To reach. 

I have sat back on my writing this year- sat back on this blog.  There's been a lot going on in my life but there's also been an unexpected fear of judgment creeping into my mind, my thoughts, my fingers.  And, uncharacteristically, I let that fear still me.  

And for that I am sorry.  I am sorry to the words I cheated, the words I left, the words I hid.  I'm sorry to those I left behind.  

But this year, I put my root down.  I go back and touch base, embrace it all.  I kick it root down.