The Year of the Settling
Like dust setting after the Shift, this year started slow. I tuned out for a while, lost some weight, lost some dream. I guess they weighted more. My mind was still reeling and confused, so I turned to work: new projects, wrapping up of old projects. I wrote a lot and, although the blog was supposed to be an outlet of emotions, it ended up forgotten on a virtual shelf.
After the outpouring of emotions at the start of 2018, it felt like the words waned out and they chose to come back at random times. But the work words have been more magnanimous. Homo narrans more about ecosystems and less about the individual stories behind them.
Like Delia del Carril, I was real and eternal because the alternative of being fiction was too inedible. I disliked the story in the fiction version and until I get the words and the actions to change the story, I chose reality.
In a nutshell, 2018 was made of these puzzle pieces (more than 2017 — an enhanced overcorrection from a year of downsizing):
- Almost 45.000 km of travel by car or plane
- New countries, new places: the wonderful taste of mulled wine with a dear friend in a tiny restaurant near the sea or the tapas while pondering the glorious and scary future of technology in a town known for modernity
- Old countries, old places that felt so familiar and brought peace. There is nothing like having warm tea and a scone at a café near Stephansdom while reading of the feminist culture of the Salonieres, with Mozart’s Nozze playing in the headphones
- Art and the joy of watching a glorious painting in a forgotten museum, of learning about photographers that have changed the world
- Music and the brilliant songs of new and old
- Books and the way they have brought feelings to the surface and somehow dulled the pain
- Almost no shoes: there was not a single purchase of high-heeled shoes: I did get two pairs of running/walking shoes (awesome!) and one pair of flats. 2017 was indeed the year of the shift.
- Going back to a club. Realizing why I stopped going in the first place.
It was also a year of lessons:
- I am what I am, and I do not need to compromise on being me: an awesome, slightly snobbish, slightly old-ish, slightly not thin-ish, slightly (read here: very) big-mouthed collection of paradoxical traits. My fears and anxieties are here to stay, so I must learn every day to welcome them and treat them as friends.
- We each help to the best of our extent. There is no need to eviscerate ourselves to help others. You cannot pour from an empty cup and all those clichés. If helping a friend would mean losing myself in the process (and being reprimanded for not doing more by that same friend), then I shall learn to be selfish.
- The landscape can oppress just as easy as an autocratic regime. I do not deal well with scenes that are turning me into a speck of dust and render people into shapeless dull beings focused on survival.
- Names are important. Thank you’s are essential. Thanksgiving and/or remembrance of people with their names and surnames makes them immortal in the web of the universe.
- Some loves burn bright and disappear without leaving pains, just friendships. Some loves burn and burn and burn and hurt and hurt and hurt. And meetings that never take place…
- I read someplace a tale of the dreams that pass through two possible gates: of wood and of horn. And some of them were meant to come true, the others to stay as dreams, untouchable. And when I first read it, it didn’t make sense: one is supposed to fight for her dreams. But some dreams are not meant to be, and it is time to let them go…
As usual, I have people to thank for making this year as good as it was: friends, teams, mentors, students: I held on because and due to you: from making me laugh when that was the last thing on my mind, to picking me up from the airport after long flights, to chatting with me over anything and everything and teaching me more than I could ever teach you. I am privileged in knowing each and every one of you.
Also, as usual, I thank this year as all years for my parents: I am what am — an awesome, slightly snobbish, slightly old-ish, slightly not thin-ish, slightly (read here: very) big-mouthed collection of paradoxical traits because of them and thanks to them. I chose well when I chose to be born in this family. Their full acceptance of all my choices throughout this year was wonderfully comforting.
2018 was the year in which running all over the world strangely allowed the specks of ideas, thoughts, fears and decisions to settle and take shape in a new form of me.
And just like the sea, I am real, I am eternal and each storm changes the scene, but I keep on with reaching out and grabbing life and letting go…