Warmup for a New Year

I'm about to work on some writing assignments, and I quickly want to stretch my fingers in the 40 minutes before Whole Foods closes. (I bought a minimum amount to be able to steal a booth guilt free. It's just me and a bag of dried organic cranberries sitting here.)

So it's 2009. It's bound to be an anxious year, fringed with angsty bill payments and group worrying over future security, with a sprig of terror decorating our global landscape as the days warm and the bees keel over. After an intense 2008 in which I flushed everything normal down the toilet and restarted my life in California, I'm hoping 2009 will be nothing but good. I have to believe in a universe that cares, and so I have to believe the energy I put out will one day reciprocate. I'm not asking for the lottery, I just want a guest spot.

Or a paycheck. Or some respect. Or some fulfillment. Or hope.

I guess I already have hope. I couldn't have moved if I didn't. I realized, as I literally tore myself away from my warm childhood home in Pennsylvania in the early morning after Christmas, loneliness is crowding my head right now. Even when I'm with friends, I feel so lonely. I don't know what will change that, other than work that has the potential to fill me up. (Fill, for non-artists, as a verb to describe the feeling that you are using your whole body, mind, and voice, to do something wonderful, useful.) Lonely or not, I, for the first time in a long time, believe happiness is possible. I'm not quite sure what I'm doing as I stumble through blindingly sunny days here, but some part of me has to know that good things exist. It's an epiphany really. I guess I always assumed that wasn't really true.

I have to believe in 2009 I'm not alone. I have to keep putting out the good, and keep hoping it'll come back. It already has, really (hey, Obama won, right?), but it's easy to look down on myself, like Jack and the Giant roaring down the beanstalk, and think, "I'm so insignificant. I'm so small. I'm so easy to crush." I have to remember, Jack wins.