Mindfulness in 2023: A Reflection

It has been five years since I have written one of these end-of-the-year reflections. I’m coming into this one after rereading what I wrote in 2018. In the intervening half a decade, I must have been just too overwhelmed by COVID and the ending of a career in education to be bothered to do a year-end reflection. The closest I came was in late January of last year, when I wrote an essay about how I knew I needed to start meditating again. Interestingly enough, or surprisingly, or disappointingly, I went another full year without any meaningful meditation practice. But I digress. I am jumping ahead of myself. Since 2018, despite the pandemic and the chaos of 2020 and the continuing fallout from the nightmare that is American politics, a lot has changed for the better, for me at least. That’s the good news. Rereading that 2018 entry served as a lovely little reminder to quell the voice of the almost omnipresent internal critic, to realize that things have, in fact, been a lot worse. But even in those darker times, silver linings could be found. In 2018 I began with a list of gripes and worries and ended by turning them over on their heads and looking at them in a more positive light. So, my work today might be the opposite of the work I did five years ago. I’ll start with what is really cooking for me right now, and maybe end with some reflection over what needs to change for 2024, something like a New Year’s Resolution. I don’t know. I’m kind of against the resolution concept, but I am in favor, generally, as we move through our lives, of self-reflection and setting intentions for better living–as opposed to the alternative. Call that a resolution, if you like.

What’s cooking?

• I’ve retired from a career in public education after 32 years teaching English in the same high school. If you’re paying any attention to this blog, you already knew that. But I haven’t given much attention here to what retired life is like so far, and maybe I will go into that at some length in later entries. And while it hasn’t ALL OF IT been puppies and kittens, it’s fair to start out by saying that it’s been pretty great on the whole. One and a half school years into this next phase of life, 2023 being the first FULL calendar year, it has been a liberating experience to know that on most days I can pretty much do whatever the hell I want.
• Beginning in the fall of 2022 and all through 2023, it has been creatively the most productive period in my life. While teaching full time, it would take me about a decade to finish writing a novel. In the single month of November, in ’22 and again in ’23, I drafted two new novels. That’s more generative fiction writing than I have done in the previous decade in a single year–no, in two months of a single year. I continue to write 30 poems in April–something I was able to accomplish while teaching, but far less attentively. And since the spring of ’23 I have finally found the time to get somewhat serious about submitting work for publication. No big news there yet. Lots of rejection notices. But it’s a good feeling to be actively engaged in that horrible process, knowing, as most writers know, that the only way to guarantee I’ll never publish is by failing to submit the work.
• Musically, I have been collaborating cross-continentally with a long-time friend and former band member to write and record original songs again. He, from Vermont, and myself here in Oregon, we generated 20 songs together just sending tracks back and forth via a mighty shared Google storage drive. It looks very much like at least 12 of those songs will end up on our first album together as PROJECT MA, an album we hope to release in the spring of 2024. As of January 5th, four of those twelve songs can be heard on almost any music streaming service you can think of.
• My son is graduating from high school this year and just literally tearing it up in World Class Drum Corps as a snare drummer, doing things rudimentally on his instrument that his dad, me, also a drummer, can’t even begin to get his head around, let alone play. So, I have been a very proud papa. My wife and I had ONE little person–and now he’s a big person–and he’s turning out to be an enormously skilled musician and a stand-up human being. I know part of that is nurture, another part nature, and another part pure dumb luck. Regardless of the recipe, we couldn’t be happier with the results.

What’s on the burner for 2024?

• I’ve got to take care of this body. It’s not getting any younger. For Christmas I got a new helmet. I’m going to start bicycling again. Tomorrow. No matter the weather. I’m going to get air in those tires, put on my new helmet, and go. I noticed that in my reflection on 2018 I was coming into awareness for the first time about my torn meniscus. It was giving me trouble in 2018, then inexplicably got better, and then made its encore appearance in 2023 in a big way. It recedes. It flares. It recedes. It flares. It recedes again. I think it has made me wary of exercising vigorously again–but I can’t be ruled by that bullshit. If it doesn’t hurt, and right now it doesn’t, it should not stop me from getting into better shape. So I plan to exercise more and drink less and eat better. You know what they say about the body and the mind . . .
• I’ve got to read more. With all of this free time, you’d think I’d be reading every single day. Not the case. My reading habits have fallen so precipitately away–it’s almost embarrassing. No, it IS embarrassing. If I wasn’t writing a lot I’d feel even worse. If I could lay the blame somewhere (and blame must be laid somewhere, preferably away from me), I would blame the stupid smart phone and lump the internet in there with it. We have all been trained very well into the company of the short-attention-span theater. Reading is such a pleasure to me, but it is also hard work. It takes a level of commitment and resolve that is easily defeated by the immediacy of social media and YouTube and TikTok. I have alway been a pretty staunch critic of cell phone addiction, but that does not preclude me from becoming a victim of it. I want to try going a whole day or maybe even days without using my phone for anything but the most urgent of communications. Look at this stack of books I need to read!

• And you know what they say about the body and the mind and the spirit . . .
• I am not a religious guy. You might even call me irreligious. But I do think it’s important to cultivate some sense of and practice of spirituality. And I would argue that religion and spirituality are two totally different things and that the latter can be achieved without and sometimes in spite of the former. After leaving the church behind me many many moons ago, I rediscovered a sense of “spirit” through Courage and Renewal work and through the practice of meditation. This all occurred for me about 23 years ago and I have been trying to keep that work alive ever since. I have been mostly successful–until recently. Perhaps the biggest and most concerning change in my day to day living since I retired has been the loss of any kind of spiritual practice, individually and/or in community. I don’t completely understand how or why this shift has taken place–but in 2024 I plan to remedy the situation. I need to make meditation a priority–because I know what it does for me. It’s a calming, grounding, life-giving practice that brings a host of positive results: clarity, magnanimity, compassion, stillness, silence. Starting tomorrow, I’m back on the cushion. And starting mid-January, I hope to reconnect with a meditation group I was in for a number of years and then somewhat mysteriously and unceremoniously abandoned.
• The other things on the burner for 2024 are almost not even worth listing–only because they are non-negotiable and I have almost absolute confidence that they will continue if the last year and a half is any indication. I will continue to write poems, fiction, blog essays, and songs. I will continue to play music. I will continue to submit my work to potential publishers. I will continue to make things. The drive to do this is extremely high for me right now. I can’t quite explain it. Almost every day I wake up asking myself, what am I making today? I can only imagine with what kind of vigor and renewed enthusiasm I might ask myself this question, if body, mind, and spirit are more properly attended to in the new year.
• My only other hope for 2024 is sadly out of my hands. All I can do is vote and try to have faith that the American people will come to their senses.

In the meantime, I thank you profusely for reading this and I wish you the best of New Years. And even though I plan to be writing a lot, I hope I can be a more regular contributor to the blog–and who knows, if I can get my eyeballs more often engaged in the reading endeavor, I might come back again to The Book I Read podcast. Cheers!