Life here

A robin perched on the roof across the driveway from my front door when I brought out some recycling, and I remembered how strange that felt last year, seeing robins in the winter. The daycare lady who loved birds always told us the robins were a sign of spring. I guess that's not true when you live south of North Dakota.

My word for the year is consistent. One of those habits I hope to hold onto more faithfully this year is writing, whether here or somewhere off the Internet. I purposely didn't start on the 1st because that feels like setting myself up for failure. I want to live a simple year, though it will hold big changes for us, and it feels most simple to focus on a handful of things where I rely on spurts of motivation.

Fittingly, I read a great bit of advice from a rock climber today, who said motivation is not the answer to accomplishing a goal. Establishing little habits more effectively moves you closer to where you want to go. It fell in line with something else I heard or read recently, though I don't remember where, that said setting goals isn't as good as developing processes that lead to your desired outcome. I said something about processes to my dad while we were home for Christmas and he said processes come easily to my sister and her husband – they seem to have a "system" in place for everything. My sister studied biochemistry – which is composed of systems and processes, he noted.

I wish I could blame my whims on being the artsier one of the two of us, but, as everything seems to, the thought led me back to my identity: Who do I say I am, who do I want to be? I'm talking descriptors here, not big fundamental definitions. A writer, a climber, a reader, a friend. Fun, easy-going, creative, skilled. Those kinds of things. And I figure I'm each of those in turn, and I know I don't have to be the same exact person every day, but I've noticed a lack of discipline to cultivate those interests or skills.

I can honestly say in 2014, I watched twice as many TV seasons than I read books. Yikes.

I spend a lot of time thinking in December and January. I'm quick to make light of resolutions, but I put a lot of stock in reflection and self-examination. I do year-round, but a new year offers that twitch of magic we miss when April or August roll around. I tried to draw out the holidays this year – still am, in fact. I still fall asleep looking at the lights on the Christmas tree. We're not ready to let go yet.

I feel lighter at the start of a year, as if when the ball drops, we cross an invisible barrier that shakes us free of some of our burdens. It's the magic. And part of it is that we're moving soon. That's what 2015 is for us – another move, another adventure. Who knows where we'll end up or what we'll do exactly, but it'll be a result of everything here and everything that wasn't here. The stuff we know now we don't want to live without. The people and the things – mostly the people, in my case – that help us live here.

I went in spurts last year, wishing graduation would come faster and feeling content to be here every day. But I've learned the danger of dreaming about the future (apart from it still takes the same time to get here) lies in its ability to persuade me that it must be better, and therefore the present most be bad. That's the world we live in – concepts exist only as long as they have an opposite to define them.

But maybe where we are is great simply because it's where we are. We love and play here, learning skills and tendencies we wouldn't find elsewhere. We live here – these years, this city, this too-small apartment. It doesn't look the same as it does elsewhere, but maybe that's the point.