approaching the new year: skein one.

i find new year resolutions to be meaningless

yet i find myself year after year committing to a menagerie of goals

and then trying to piece them all together.

as we approach a new decade

(i was born in '80, so for me it is truly a new decade)

and i face the ominous '30'

i dig into my knitting bag of spontaneous blah

(i knit...this metaphor works for me)

and hope to piece together a more complete me

made from all the random skeins i find in there.

i love this.

taken from body+soul, december 2009.

page 52

'silence is golden'

by alyssa giacobbe

ever since i was a child, i've preferred silence to speech, carefully chosen words to banter. i wasn't lazy, or even particularly shy. i just didn't feel the need to speak unless i had something to say.

but being quiet isn't tolerated in our society. it's perceived, at turns, as curious, off-putting, rude; the speechless person as cold, boring, dumb. people don't get it. and so i learned early on that in order to forge relationships-- and forge ahead in my career -- i'd have to learn the art of chitchat. (even though, to me, it usually feels like the art of filling space.) so in general, i chatter along with the best of them, striking up conversations in supermarket lines, at the vet, even in the library. this is what people do, i tell myself, thought it makes me feel frazzled and tired.

i couldn't have said it better myself.

i don't know how many times i've been perceived as the 'bitchy' one because of what i don't say

i don't know how many times i've sent friends and co-workers away scratching their heads because they think they've done something wrong

i don't know how many times i've heard my poor husband say, 'are you all right? you're so quiet...'

what is it about being quiet that we (as a society) deem wrong?

why do we feel mindless chatter is necessary to building and maintaining relationships?

why is it necessary to kick a horse over and over again when it is so obviously dead?

ultimately

i am a quiet person by nature

much like the author

and find chitchat a waste of breath

however

i find myself engaging in it day after day

and for what?

i gain nothing from it.

in fact

i usually come away from it feeling like more of my soul has been hacked away at by the mundane.

okay.

maybe that's a bit dramatic

but that's exactly what the chatter does: it opens a door for the dramatic.

as i steer towards a new year

i am going to make a more conscious effort to be quiet

and listen to me

the world around me

and the people that are closest to me.

i refuse to let the chatter

drown out my life.

what skeins are you pulling from your bag this year?

go well.