Hello! I know you’re probably expecting a list of things I found beautiful in June, but I had a last-minute change of heart when I realized I would be starting my hiatus on the week in which I traditionally publish my yearly list of personal failures. Not wanting to deprive you of my annual humiliation, I decided to revisit my New Year’s resolutions a week early. I’ll still include one beautiful moment from June at the end, just to give you something pretty to ponder while I am gone.
As part of my annual bullet journal setup, I always include two of my favorite spreads: a vision board for the year and a list of my goals or resolutions. The vision board is a collage dedicated to what I want my year to look like, and the list of goals is self-explanatory. This year, I never got around to making my vision board. When I was setting up my 2023 bullet journal, I struggled to visualize what my next year could look like, and struggled even more to envision what I wanted it to look like. And so the vision board pages sit empty still, two blank pages with nothing but vision board scribbled across them in pencil which I try not to feel guilty or ashamed about when my notebook accidentally falls open to them.
My list of goals was similarly short and sweet, with only three and a half items making the cut. The first was to write daily poems. I have wanted to get back into the groove of writing every day like I did in 2020 and early 2021, and it simply has not happened. All the poems I’ve written this year have appeared here on Fridays, most often written in one sitting. It’s just not part of my routine like it was during covid when I would eat dinner, watch Gossip Girl, lay out a giant blanket on the floor, and sprawl on it writing poems every night. My routine isn’t actually very different these days except I am rewatching Parks & Rec for the thousandth time instead of Gossip Girl and I usually watch it until it gets late enough for me to shower and go read in bed. I think I’ve convinced myself that I have nothing to say, which has sort of dulled any momentum I might have had. Maybe during my hiatus, I’ll try to write more poems to share when I come back in the fall. While I don’t think I’ll be able to get back into the swing of writing a poem every single day in the second half of the year, writing anything at all during my newsletter break will be good progress.
I said only three and a half goals made the cut, and here comes the 1.5: I wanted to fulfill my yoga continuing education credentials, and also read one new book about yoga per quarter. To be a Yoga Alliance member, one must complete 30 hours of continuing education every three years, and I spent all of 2022 just trying to get my feet under me when it came to teaching. After a full year of teaching regularly, I decided my brain was ready to handle learning something new, and I enrolled in an 85-hour certification program, far surpassing the 30-hour requirement. Because of this, I have not made the time to read any yoga books outside of my program, and have surrendered that part of the goal. Perhaps I’ll pick it back up next year when I’m not focusing my energy on earning a new 85-hour certification. As far as the continuing education goes, I am almost finished with the course, which puts me on track to fulfill my goal well before the end of the year.
My final but maybe most highly anticipated goal was to bake a good loaf of bread. I am happy to report that I did successfully manage to make one good loaf of bread and a whole lot of just okay ones as well. My grandpa shared some of his sourdough starter with me earlier in the year, and I was making bread every single week for a while. I have taken a tiny break because I was baking it faster than we were eating it and then we had other bread that wasn’t sourdough so it didn’t make sense to make more when we already had a loaf waiting to be eaten, but maybe I’ll use my hiatus to bake more bread now that that loaf is gone. I don’t think I’ve quite perfected my recipe yet, but I’ve definitely been able to make some marked improvements, especially once I discovered that I needed more water than the recipe I loosely followed called for. Hydrate or diedrate applies to bread dough and the human body, who knew?
I kept my list small this year to try and keep it manageable. Even so, I’d say I’m about halfway achieved. Which, now that I think about it, the year is nearly half over, so maybe I’m right on track. I’m trying to be easier on myself, which usually means that I criticize myself for being too hard on myself instead of just being nicer to myself. The hardest thing to remember is that even if I achieved none of these goals, I would still be a human being who is worthy of love and respect and frozen custard when I want it.
I told you I’d finish with one moment of beauty from June, so here it is: one day earlier in the month, before our air quality was reduced to a constant haze from Canadian wildfires, driving over Milwaukee’s biggest bridge, looking out over a blue Lake Michigan, and hardly being able to tell where the water ended and the cloudless sky began.
3 R’s
at what point will I stop feeling
anything new?
rage is rage is rage is relief is relief is reluctant
when will I have felt all of the things
I’ll ever feel again?
eventually I’ll have to run out of new
emotions, destined to recycle
the same ones for every new event
the only two seasons are winter and construction but the lines between the two are getting blurred
the house keeps crackling
in response to the trucks humming
down the street where they’re
cutting trees or drilling or filling holes
and making it hard to commute
past the school that’s out for the summer
I thought I’d look forward to school
being out forever like alice cooper
said it would be but what does one do
with a perpetual summer
there’s always a new way to die that I hadn’t thought of before
I am feeling my own existence too heavy
a burden on my shoulders the only
thing from which I cannot escape unscathed
there are so many versions of me floating
through everyone else’s heads
in each, I imagine the worst
a perpetual swelling of ego to dream
any of it matters to anyone
did you that know you can outgrow
your own skin?
Thank you, as always, for reading, and for allowing me to take a few weeks/months off from writing to try and gather my wits once more. Paid newsletters will continue every Monday throughout July, with a break from both paid and free newsletters starting in August. I hope I feel ready to be back by October, but, as I kept telling myself in December of last year when trying to make my vision board, you just never know.
Until next time, whenever that may be —