First Day Hike at Breakheart Reservation 1 January 2022
I have spent most of this past week dealing with a nasty allergic reaction to… something, probably a soap. I don’t think that “itchy” is on anyone’s list of how they want to ring in the new year, but here we are. I wrapped up a few things over the last few 2021 days regardless. Knitted another hat, finished most of the books I have left lying around half-read for months now (total for the year: 43!), read the newsletters that have been languishing in my email, organized the kitchen cabinets, did not even for a moment think about staying up last night.
I also worked my way through the latest Unravel Your Year workbook, which has become a tradition for me over the past few years. My word for 2022 is “map.” I want to be a little more thoughtful this year about where I’m going–and where I’ve been–what travel instructions I can take and give. This choice may have been influenced by knowing that my first 2022 read will be Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost. (Her writing was an amazing discovery for me in 2021.) In the first essay she references a quote from Meno:
How will you go about finding that thing, the nature of which is totally unknown to you?
A good question with which to begin the year, I think–a year haunted to some extent by the unfulfilled promises of the last one.
R Jean Stevenson 