Monday, February 25, 2013

2013 Theme

About a month ago ... er, or two months ago, I said I was going to write a post about my personal theme for 2013. Then a wave of apathy hit me I got busy and I "forgot" about it.

Until now. Fortunately, my personal theme has nothing to do with not procrastinating so here goes.

My theme has to do with metamorphoses, with possibilities and with change. Coincidentally, it's the Chinese year of the snake. While I like the idea of shedding old skin, I don't like snakes. Plus, a snake that sheds its skin is still a snake. Yuck.

So instead I've made my personal theme about butterflies. I know, it sounds a bit cliche and a little cheesy. But I learned something interesting about a caterpillar's transition into butterfly: when the process starts taking place these new cells pop up, called imaginal cells. The old cells don't like these new cells so they start attacking them. But more and more of the new cells are generated until the eventual transformation into the butterfly occurs.


I've been thinking a lot about change and about growth. Unlike the snake that sheds old skin but essentially remains the same, the caterpillar goes into the cocoon and emerges a butterfly -- but not without resistance. Change is difficult and it doesn't come without a fight. The resistance is often internal and external. But this quote from Anais Nin sums it up for me: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

This year I am ready to change things up. Not just external things like my career and my geographical location. But also internal changes. I am ready to push through the resistance (in whatever form it comes) so I can emerge "a new creature." It's the possibility of change and the hope of becoming better that keeps me going.

Here's to 2013: a year of possibility.

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Back in the Blogosphere Again... For Now

Hello, blogger my old friend... 

Yeah, so I took a year off to ... well, 2012 was not a year in which I accomplished much. So I guess I took a year off from blogging to think about doing other things, and then ended up doing meaningful things like watching TV and contemplating exercising.

The truth is, I was not sad to see 2012 go. Was it a terrible year? Did my house burn down or did a family member die? Did I run over someone's cat or eat too many vegetables? Thankfully, no. None of these tragedies occurred. 

Still, 2012 was, ahem, not the year of good mental health practices. Which means that if I'd had kerosene and a match or saw someone's cat in the road... Just kidding, of course. I'm afraid of fire and I like cats so I found other ways to be crazy. (After a while, it becomes an art. They do say practice makes perfect. They just don't specify what you should practice. Although I'm thinking crazy probably isn't on the list.)

Well.

Anyway, I feel like I should give 2012 some sort of farewell just to prove I did live through it. So here goes:

Best movies of 2012 (not in order)
Liberal Arts
Life of Pi
Lincoln
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Hope Springs
The Amazing Spiderman
The Hunger Games

Favorite books read in 2012
My Name Is Asher Lev
The Fault in Our Stars
The Sky Is Everywhere 
When Women Were Birds
The Bell Jar
Moon Over Manifest
Okay for Now

Best bands discovered in 2012
Bon Iver
Blind Pilot
Florence + the Machine
Of Monsters and Men

Random things I enjoyed in 2012
Vacation in San Diego with the fam
Downton Abby (I will marry Matthew if Mary won't)
The Shins concert at Red Butte (too cold but the opening bands were fantastic)
White chocolate peppermint M&Ms (dang, those are good)
Meeting a new cousin, Kaija 
Seeing Hamlet at the Shakespeare Festival 

I think there are more things I enjoyed but I can't remember any of them right now. I'm not really a big "New Year's resolutions" kind of person (mostly because I, like most people, rarely keep them) but I do have a personal "theme" for 2013. A post about that is too come. 

In the meantime, hooray for a new beginning!