The holiday card we won’t be sending
You know those long format holiday greetings that some people send around, which is their way to catch up with far away friends and family? I was thinking about that sort of card and what mine might look like for 2011.
While you can go back and connect the dots and see patterns, in the midst of living, life often seems haphazard and chaotic.
I could start my letter like this: Dear loved one, at the beginning of this year, the economy was still roiling from the utterly complex and at times absurd financial bubble we had been in and I was faced with new directions in my job and also with ongoing maintenance projects at the house that Rachel built on the bayou, also known as the LaLa, and I jumped into the year with both feet and with a few ugly monkeys on my back. I remember distinctly when the air conditioning system was being evaluated in the addition and the suggestion was to run another vent up to where the desk is and I said, “But if I have to take a job in an office, then this might be where a bed goes because we might rent out this room.” Then I said aloud, I have been working from home for so long the thought of being in an office makes me flinch. And the worker said, “Then why would you contemplate a job in an office?” Good question.
Then I began to imagine other jobs and what they would be like and I started making a note on orange paper of jobs I might like to have, might like to create, might like to be and hung these individual notes on my office door. I had 22 notes before I knew where I was going. One of them was to open a hair salon.
I then had a conversation with someone who asked me, “When are you going to give up who you might have been, and realize who you have become?”
I’ve found this out about life this year – that if you open yourself up, many people will come forward – some are Cassandra’s, some are earth angels – but your mission in life is to get right with your own soul and let your soul recognize from which direction the light is shining. I was able to see with piercing accuracy a paper tiger versus kryptonite.
That is only one part of 2011, I had yet to even formulate what the message about Tin (yay!) or Tatjana (good, better, best) would be, before I decided that I prefer to send a photograph instead.