Taking stock in the new year

As the first month of the new year slips away, I real­ize I spent January tak­ing stock, sift­ing through the phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al accu­mu­la­tions of these past few years — years I can only describe as surreal.

While rum­mag­ing recent­ly in my art room piles, I came upon this water­col­or-and-pen still life dat­ed July 24, 2020, which seems like a life­time ago. I’m trot­ting it out now because com­ing across it feels like unearthing a time cap­sule, or at least an old snap­shot of my world on that par­tic­u­lar day.

Do you remem­ber July 24, 2020? I didn’t, but with a cou­ple of key­strokes, I was quick­ly remind­ed that it was a 91-degree Friday, about four months into Clark County’s COVID-19 cri­sis. Donald Trump was in the White House angling for a crack at a sec­ond term. The Winchester Sun was teem­ing with bylines we now see in WinCity Voices: Pete was encour­ag­ing read­ers to mask up and take the nov­el coro­n­avirus seri­ous­ly, Erin was teach­ing us how to breathe, and Randy was report­ing on an uptick in COVID cas­es tied to a local church.

I was appar­ent­ly at home that day, like­ly swel­ter­ing and seek­ing dis­trac­tion from the heat by paint­ing. I do remem­ber hav­ing the idea to look close­ly at some every­day objects around me and paint them as a group (includ­ing a beau­ti­ful but dead cica­da I found in the yard, its body and wings so per­fect and unmarked that I couldn’t bear to part with it).

This is why I hold on to stuff: so I can occa­sion­al­ly sift through it and remem­ber where I’ve been, what I’ve expe­ri­enced and felt, who I was at a giv­en point in time — things that seem essen­tial for mov­ing for­ward in a con­scious and con­struc­tive way.

The last few years have been more than a lit­tle off-kil­ter, and I’m recal­i­brat­ing. I imag­ine you are, too. The upheavals we’ve under­gone — polit­i­cal­ly, med­ical­ly, eco­nom­i­cal­ly, social­ly, cli­mat­i­cal­ly — leave me won­der­ing if any of us will ever be the same. Not that we should be. Quite the oppo­site, in fact: adapt­ing to change is some­thing we humans do best.

New Year’s Resolutions are increas­ing­ly passé these days, but delib­er­ate reflec­tion about where we’ve been and how best to move for­ward nev­er goes out of style because, like it or not, we are all in a per­pet­u­al state of “becom­ing.”

I, for exam­ple, am becom­ing old. This year I’ll turn into a dual senior cit­i­zen — a pen­sion­er and a Medicare recip­i­ent — two mile­stones that might require me to get a big­ger mail­box. Similarly notable is the unset­tling fre­quen­cy with which once-easy con­ver­sa­tions sput­ter due to mem­o­ry laps­es, espe­cial­ly regard­ing names. And just a few weeks ago, I broke down and bought a Roomba, for cry­ing out loud.

This “new nor­mal” feels pecu­liar — but the year is still young, even though I am not. I am heart­ened, at least, by my recent return to the gym, increased lev­el of in-per­son social­iz­ing, and resump­tion of late-night nov­el reading.

So I’m dif­fer­ent in some ways, but also still the same. I guess we all are. Returning to old habits feels good, but intu­ition tells me that at this point it might be more help­ful to devel­op new ones to enhance life going forward.

But I can’t seem to do that with­out first look­ing back. Sifting through rem­nants of the past and remem­ber­ing what’s been for­got­ten is — for me, at least — a nec­es­sary part of the process.

Whenever I’m exca­vat­ing, be it in piles of old paint­ings or fad­ed W2 forms, I nev­er know what will sur­face, but I always know what I’ll find:  a thread — hid­den and fray­ing, yet some­how still attached to an ear­li­er ver­sion of myself — wait­ing patient­ly to be picked up and car­ried with me into the future.