I’ve been coming up for air, over and over, for the past few weeks.  It’s been nice to sequester myself away from the rest of the world (okay, except for Facebook, which seems to be the only online social hangout that I will venture into these days, mainly because I don’t feel like it will consume me in quite the same way as writing, say, a blog post).  It’s been nice to get some writing done.  One short story for a YA anthology, and some novel revisions.  I’ll be working on those for quite some time, I think.  And still haven’t actually finished the book, which will probably not occur until I’m finished completing coursework for my MFA degree at Chatham University.  Which will be done this summer.  I’ve enjoyed the courses I’ve taken and the professors and writers and poets with whom I’ve worked over the past year and a half, but I’m also looking forward to having all of my writing time back to devote to the book in a concentrated way (which is the way a book, at least for me, needs to be written).  I’m going to keep progressing at a snail’s pace until I can burst free of teaching responsibilities at the end of spring, and then hopefully I will eventually find myself at the end of a book by end of summer.  Whenever it does occur, it will be a happy day for me.

Over winter break, I’ve given myself some time to be unproductive (mainly Christmas week), to enjoy being around friends and family, and not to worry about something that needs to be done.  Pretty soon, I’ll be back to fretting anyway, so I figured, here, take a week to not fret about anything at all.  It’s been nice not fretting.  I could get used to that.

And here we are at the turn of the year again, the new staring down the old.  I used to get sort of down about the turn of the year, but this year I’m trying to gear myself up to take it on, kick-boxer style.  The past couple of years have been exhausting for me in a number of ways, but 2010 promises at least a little bit of relief, so I’m being grateful in advance about that.

I’m also thinking about resolutions, which I used to think were kind of silly.  It seems so easy to say on New Year’s I’m going to do something-something, and then not follow through.  I think that’s probably what happens for a lot of people.  But resolutions are only as good as the will you provide to make them happen, and I intend to make a couple of resolutions for 2010 that I plan to keep.  It’s good, I think, to give ourselves permission to start something new, or to start something over, to provide ourselves with a blank slate every now and then, to not get caught up in past failures or disappointments.  So I’m using the new year as a marker for earnest changes, and instead of this sounding silly or random as it has in the past, it’s providing me with a bit of hope and motivation at the moment.  I’ll take those two things wherever I can get them.

As for blogging, anyone who is reading this knows I’m not much of a blogger anymore.  I’m not sure how I feel about that.  On one hand, I miss it.  On the other, I don’t.  I don’t find myself reading many blogs very much any longer either.  Whenever I do, I have the same reaction that I often do when I check back in with the television:  Oh, it’s still the same stuff.  (With television, this provides a more surreal response due to the amount of years that have gone by with me not being a regular TV watcher: Wow, it’s really still the same stuff it was ten years ago!).  In terms of blogging, though, I think I might return to it more regularly when, again, I’m finished with my degree and have a bit more time to write things that aren’t assignments.

For now, though, I leave you with this farewell to 2009 greeting.  Everyone needs a little ABBA, right?  See you on the flipside.