ice breaker

The last time I ventured here was December 10, 2007 when I created a draft ("breaking the ice") eerily presaging what I started to type moments ago. Looking back, I now ask myself, Why waste the words? I'd thought I was emerging after months of silence here, but now, six months beyond that, it seems that ice thaws on its own if you just wait long enough.


Today is the latest in what has felt like weeks of colder than usual days. It's as if Mother Nature or the weather gods had fast-forwarded from October to December, plunging New England into the deep freeze. It's been the psychological equivalent of those (fool)hardy souls who rush into off-season frigid waters for reasons that always escape me. I'd been fresh-frozen and never knew what hit me.

When I last wrote it was late spring and I was anticipating every possibility that summer holds. I posted here, packed my bags and left for a week of visiting friends and decompressing after what had been a frenzied, overloaded winter. The flurries that had swirled around me for months were not crystals from a winter sky, but deeper currents of change and upheaval. So even though I made notes, observations and journal entries while vacationing, I also unconsciously pulled a plug...and months since have passed here without commentary from me.

A couple of years ago I was inspired by "The Gift of a Year" (Mira Kirshenbaum) and it became the cornerstone of my holiday giving. I also claimed 2006 for myself, but I never really felt as though I tapped into whatever flow I'd hoped would emerge if I only made the commitment. Nature abhors a vacuum so days and months went by pretty much as usual with nothing compelling my attention or passion. Then as that underwhelming year wound down both a change of address and new focus emerged. And the first six months of 2007 pretty much claimed my energy, attention, stamina and resilience. Hmm, the year was laying claim to me rather than the other way around. Who was in charge here, anyway?

It would appear that the changes initiated this time last year also triggered a hunger in me to pull back, conserve, re-direct and even unplug for a while. I cut back on my work and immersed myself in the move: creating a new home and making a new life with something of the old and some things new. By the time June rolled around though I was unconsciously ready to switch off.


And with that sentence and nothing more to say, I saved the draft and switched off the computer.

Welcome back.