2022: The Restless Year

And Intentions for 2023

The end of one year. The beginning of another.

Time for reflection, time to go inner. But on the last night of 2022, like most of the preceding days, I found it difficult to summon sufficient space or time to delve deep, to assess what I achieved and failed, how I learned or stumbled, over the last year. I do know last year was the year I didn’t write—and the year I didn’t read. My head and heart were otherwise preoccupied, and I rarely found the calm, the motivation, the flow needed to write and read. So, I edited—a lot. Editing uses a different part of the brain, one that detaches more easily than generative work. Because most novels failed to hold my attention, I turned to non-fiction, skimming up facts and ideas with the short-lived intensity of a Jeopardy match.

***

Last year was the restless year, a time possessed by a weird low-grade psychological akathisia where I dashed from idea to idea, book to book, experience to experience, without full engagement. Even as I sat with my novel, my mind skittered: feed the chickens, pay my kids’ tuition bills, to friends and strangers who found themselves suddenly crippled in their life journeys. Under my skin, my cells tremored, vibrations that accelerated deep into my organs, vessels, bones. I wanted to claw out this restlessness, gather it in my hand, squeeze it and fling it against a wall.

I wanted it gone.

I wanted to focus. I wanted to dedicate.

But how to focus when the world’s problems are so real and huge and all-encompassing? And uncontrollable?

***

This inability to write, to put butt in chair, was my smallest yet most frustrating struggle this past year, and much of the year before. Fear and anger envelope so much space that it becomes impossible for me to think and breathe, find compassion and forgiveness. Once I moved from The City, I made progress in controlling fear; it morphed into anger, an anger which also, over the past months, has tamped down from hot blue flames into orange coals.

Besides the move, I managed my fear and anger through a combination of meditation and physical work. Meditation trained my once near-daily panic attacks into an anxiety I could talk myself down from. Working outside grounded me: touching the earth, yanking our poke weed, planting elderberry and passionflower. I hiked the nearby trails, intuitively seeking vistas and horizons where current geography edges up against potential haven or peril.

I came to comprehend fear and anger stem from the same place—a sense of danger. I didn’t feel safe. Not feeling safe elicited my inner Lion. I stopped ruminating and started to DO. I made lists and plans. I did research. I organized and reached out. I made tangible goals. These activities cleared those overwhelming emotions of fear and anger, and allowed clear thinking to prevail, if only in short spurts.

In my physical busy-ness, I realized I needed sanctuary.

So, I fled the city, bought four acres, and cleared bits of The Land. I tended chickens and sowed seeds, and began to develop relationships with community farmers, entrepreneurs, and others who strive for self-sufficiency. To that end, I enrolled in herb-growing school to learn how to cultivate, grow, harvest, process, and market medicinal and culinary herbs. I strived to become less reliant on the grid, so I invested in back-up solar batteries and generators. I’ve started to learn how to forage and process my bounty for future use. I pushed myself to do things that scared me, like shoot rifles, operate zero-turn mowers, work a woodstove.

2022 was the restless year. 2022 was the year I sweated. 2022 was the year I started tp clear my head and heart to make sense of my next paths.

***

I don’t make resolutions—they make me feel small and guilty if not achieved. Resolutions remind me too much of SMART goals, technical, unachievable, and validated by an external third party. I don’t want another boss in my life.  

Instead, I consider intentions. Intentions can be made any time (indeed, I often revisit intentions on my birthday) and, at least to me, have less of a commitment feel. Intentions are more like road trips than road maps.

For 2023, I intend to accept my restlessness, let it flow through and around me, rather than fight it. Fear and anger stoke battle, two emotions I need to eliminate in the everyday, and instead, save them for true threats.

This year, I intend to surrender. I intend to let go. In doing so, I hope to focus on—and commit to—those things that once brought me peace and/or joy: writing, of course, and reading, but also growing and tending to the animals and people in my life. I intend to regain my peace.

This life is short. I intend to live it.

Peace…