Resolutions

Twenty Ten. A new year, with new resolutions and new things that we must do. And one of the greatest mysteries we face is “What will I do next?”

Easy things like talking, wandering around or eating is about as equally mysterious as the hard stuff like thinking, creating and career planning. Trying to figure out the mystery only leads one to making weird faces, and its become apparent to me over these last couple of years that I’m pretty poor at planning. I find that its easier on my face if I don’t focus to stringently on it.

For a while, I had had side projects that kept me pretty busy, but a long break over the holidays and the subsequent work load back at the office has proven to me that I need to be spending more time away from the screen, and also more time away from “work” and all that’s related to it.

After a few years of living here in New York, I’ve come to respect it and know it as more than those initial feelings of it being a place of thrilling experiences. There are so many amazing things happening here, all the time, that most of one’s anxiety in the city comes from the over whelming feeling of being in a perpetual state of missed opportunities. And, it takes alot of work to get by here. You need patience, humility and empathy for your neighbor, and yourself. And you have to create time for friendships and hobbies to avoid falling into a work-only lifestyle.

But too often today, I find it easy to forget to stop and breathe. Work late, multiple meetings for multiple projects that become double booked and all of a sudden you are over-organized. It becomes all too easy to forget the simple acts that have been redefined as indulgences.

They should be part of our natural routine.

So, maybe that’s the resolution for 2010. What I’ll do next is focus more on the simple acts.

Fitting My Current Mood Perfectly

Dreams

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

If you travelled back in time to 1963 and told everyone that in 2009 the President of the United States is a black man, perhaps only Martin Luther King Jr. would have believed you.

Nomenclature, Semantics, Etc

New Year’s Eve

It’s begun snowing in New York on this eve of 2010. Walking down the street, the air is crisp and the lights in the brownstones are giving off a luxurious and golden glow. The park beyond is already cast in pure whites and deep black.

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
…
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep…

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Robert Frost (1923)