excerpts from a new year's letter

edited freely. because i can.

dear [friend],

sometimes when my time becomes my own, my mind wanders off to places it hasn't been in a long while. once it arrives, it feels very lost. it makes me feel the way i would imagine a patient with amnesia would feel— like i'm about to remember something, like i should know where i am, but i just can't and don't. i recognize things, but i don't belong anymore. that's how i feel about the world you live in. i imagine that you spend your time in pursuit of understanding and experiencing beauty, truth, and life. am i right?

i have become a person with much less depth than i used to possess. i am not okay with that. it's a line from a song: "what i wouldn't give to be younger and wiser...." i spend more of my time being busy with tasks at hand, and i spend most of my emotional energy being righteously indignant about work-related topics or about ways that i have been mildly wronged.

so. now it's new year's eve eve. i have allowed christmas to pass with little contemplation about "the reason for the season" and little sentiment toward anyone. this has become the usual for my christmas holidays. new year's day, however, has for two years in a row held pleasant little surprises for me. good things happen to me on new year's day. things that inspire hope. not the kind of hope that swells and soars high in the clouds like a brightly coloured childhood kite, but rather the sort that glows as a little coal whose heat is key in "bringing forth life and giving growth, seed for sowing and bread for eating...." if it happens again this year, i shall officially declare new year's day my favorite holiday, ahead of good friday.

and that, dear friend, is how my holiday season is going.

[update on the family omitted]

... as for me, there's not much to say except that i am still working. isn’t that what i always have to report? so nothing new there, except that my passion for medicine is waning, and my certainty about God's intentionally placing me here in this job in particular has all but dissipated. i am blandly happy with my life in that i am comfortable and well-fed, and i have my health and relative youth, and i am still thin, well-dressed, and not physically repulsive. that's all. nothing special. nothing bad.

[personal section about friend omitted]

... in any case, i hope you have a happy new year, full of light and laughter and noise and colors and banging on pots and pans and people who maybe actually remember the words to auld lang syne.

and i hope the same for you too, dear reader. happy new year.

p.s. i miss your "metronome" series of blog posts.