Intention

So I see some people are making their New Year's resolutions. I tried it myself last year and, as predicted, failed miserably; unless you count the conception, gestation and delivery of the Boychen as the physical challenge I waxed poetic about craving, in which case I succeeded beyond my wildest expectations.* But for the most part, the first two sentences of last year's New Years post summed me and my year up nicely: I am a resolution-maker in spite of my better judgment, and I am a resolution-breaker. And yet. And yet the new year rolls around and the empty pages of a new calendar carry me off like white wings. I am ever turning over a blank page and covering it with my scrawls. It is either hopeful or pathetic, I can never decide, how I continue to believe in the blank page of tomorrow.

And yet I regularly fail at the big ticket Resolution with a capital R. Partly it's human nature, I suppose - many people fail at the capital R resolution - and partly it's my own particular failing. Over the years I seem to have lost the ability to keep my eye on a long-term goal. I was good at it back in the day; I trained all year for a single bicycle race; I would grind my way up Firehouse Hill in October all the while thinking of the track in April. But somewhere along the line the distant goal on the far horizon became less compelling to me. Hence the zero marathons I've run in all my years of resolving to run a marathon. And with a new baby in the house I think this is a year I need to be particularly gentle with myself in the resolutions department. This year I'm leaving the Resolutions with a capital R on the side of the road.

I do, however, like the idea of having a theme for the year (as seen at Profgrrrrl). A theme for the year seems like a good way of inviting a particular quality into my life, a quality I feel to be lacking while leaving open the specific ways that might happen. Rather than detailed resolutions I'm thinking of more broad-brush intentions for the year (as seen at Scrivenings). In fact, my intention for the year is Intention. I don't know what my year is going to look like; I still can't see what kind of baby the Boychen is going to turn into - he's covered both easy and colicky in the first seven weeks of his life and right now is at the peak of his disorganized needy early infancy. He could go either way; he's evolving so fast that every morning I wake up to a different person. But I do know enough to know that life with a baby in the house means stiching stolen blocks of time together like a patchwork quilt. There is never enough of any one material to cover the bed; the best I can hope for is fitting the scraps together into a sunburst. Knowing that, I also know that I can't take on a project that requires large consolideated blocks of time. Not yet anyway. I'm not even sure I can take on a project that involves counting on the same block of time every week. Not yet anyway. I do know I am going to have scraps of time, yellow and orange and solid and patterned scraps of time to stitch together.

What can I do with such crazy quilt pieces of time? I don't think I can plan big. I know enough to know that this new small person will take the carefully constructed jigsaw puzzle of my day and sweep it to the floor. I know that he'll scribble on my blank calender days, dribble paint on my journal leaving only a tiny blank corner for me. I know enough to know that for months I won't know what any given day will look like other than that it will have sunrise and a sunset. So I know that I cannot plan big. But I can plan deep. I don't know how many minutes a day I will get and I don't know how I want to spend them - writing poetry? catching up on sleep? photography? playing with my sons? - but I know if I spend them with intention I'll be spending them well.

I don't know if I want to run a marathon or publish a poem or play with my children this year. I just know I want to be present in my life. Those minutes I get here and there, I want to live them with intention. That's all.

That's everything.

* At the end of my labor - maybe 9 centimeters dialated, unmedicated, and battered by waves of contractions like so much flotsam and jetsam on the open sea - I managed to grunt out to R: "It takes a guy like Lance Armstrong 47 minutes to climb L'Alp d'Huez. I can do this for another 20." Yes, in labor. Seriously. Lance Armstrong. I know. I am such a dork.