Alist on a River of Dreams

As the wheel turns, creaking in the frozen air, and we turn toward the light once again, I'm thinking of lists big and small, what I want to accomplish this year, and what I want to be sure not to miss in my lifetime. Recycling is good, as we know, and I've already recycled a few, um, intentions (better not to call them resolutions; better to acknowledge that I probably won't get them all done in 2008, or what's a heaven for?): I'll knit for charity again this year, and spin, and make socks, and I still want to make that sweater, but I think I need a few shiny new possibilities to hang on my tree as well.

So, in 2008 I intend to:

• Paddle more, drift less. This is the biggie. I admit I totally stole it from Lene — well, I sort of did, I've had it in mind for a while, but she along with a couple of other talented writers crystallized it for me. When Taz got sick I put myself on autopilot, figuring in the back of my mind that eventually life would return to normal and I'd forge ahead again. What I once knew as normal never returned, because it never does, yet I'm still far too likely to let the current carry me, even though it long ago stopped rushing me along willy-nilly, and the sharp rocks are much fewer and farther between. Much is beyond my control, but much is not; I feel that I've become a little too serene. May I be granted the wisdom to pick my quests, fight the current enough but not too much, and the courage to try and fail and try again, and again. And maybe even succeed once in a while.
  
• Try something new at least once a week. Nothing big, scary or expensive: read a new blog, walk a new trail, think inside the box.
  
• Go three places I've never been. They can be near or far.
  
• Design my first triangular shawl. (Dirt-simple diamond pattern doesn't count.)
  
• Read at least six books I haven't read before. (I read books over and over. A lot of people think that's weird.) Six doesn't sound like many, does it? but most of my reading comes in snippets, blog posts, articles, poems, essays. That being the case, I'll add the caveat that they must be full-length books and not anthologies.

That's only five new things, but it's a start. Oh, here's one more: put at least ten things on my Big List, the things I want to do before I die. I don't know how long that list is. Some people say it should be a hundred things, and you can take things off and put new ones on. I suppose picking a number makes it manageable. Maybe I'd better make that twenty things, or thirty, even — I feel a bit overwhelmed trying to think of even that many, but I can always change the list. Or it can change me.