End of the Year Things

Here's to whispered beginnings.

Before we get started, would you take just a moment with me? Stop whatever else you’re doing, pause the television, move to a different room, turn the lights off, do what you must to quiet the space around you.

Click the song title below (or here, for Apple Music users), close your eyes, and for four minutes, let all the good, the bad, and everything in between of this year wash over you.

You’re here. You’ve made it. Whatever this year held, whatever you carried, whatever you gained or lost, dreamed of or failed at, you have seen this year to its end and a new one awaits you.

I can’t promise you what the next year will or won’t hold, but I can promise you made a difference in my 2023 by the simple gesture of giving my words some space in your inbox and in your minds to live and to breathe, and I’m so grateful to have you in my company for the year ahead. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

There are a million loathsome things about being sick, but one of my least favorite of all is losing my voice.

Somehow, though, it almost always happens. Like clockwork, illness snakes its way down the back of my throat and lays claim to my vocal cords. As a child, even small sicknesses brought on by the stress of big events would steal my voice for days on end. I was a quiet kid, though, so it didn’t much matter.

But as an adult with things to say, the strain of trying to talk without a voice becomes unbearable. It’s as painful to do as it is to hear, I’m sure, but for some reason I persist, forgetting there are other ways to speak.

When I envisioned the last week+ of our year, it looked nothing like this:

The grocery bag hanging from my nightstand drawer filled with crumpled tissues and empty cough drop wrappers.

The brand new loveseat with a permanent imprint the shape of our nine year-old where he’s spent the bulk of the last week.

The refrigerator shelves stuffed with pyrex dishes of holiday leftovers I can no longer taste or smell.

The glassy-eyed children toppling at the slightest frustration because they’ve been feverishly coughing and watching television for days.

The cheery decorations still up because we stored the bins in the attic instead of in the guest room to make space for guests who couldn’t come, in the end.

The steadfast husband, the last man standing, keeping this place afloat.

None of us wanted it this way. None of us ever does.

Yesterday, I started whispering.

It’s amusing to watch the people used to hearing my voice, sometimes raised, adapt to listen for words made without vibrating the vocal cords. A few times, they’ve caught themselves whispering needlessly in reply. The puppy is entirely confused.

All day, though, I watch ears lean in, the better to hear me by, and it dawns on me how much more significant the words I say feel.

Maybe, even, more powerful?

Last night, our daughter crumpled into my weary arms on her third day of battling symptoms. Her tired voice rasped between sobs, “I don’t want to be sick anymoooorrre,” and I held her tight to me, brushing her hair with my fingertips.

Barely holding back my own tears, I whispered in reply, “I hear you, honey. I do.”

We stood in our quiet little bubble of understanding knowing it fixed nothing and everything, all at once.

I’ve had ample time in bed this week to read, write, and work on goal setting for the new year. But I have done only a very little bit of the first. Instead, the most I’ve managed between naps, trips to the bathroom, and getting up every few hours to check temps and administer meds has been to finish my rewatches of both New Girl and Felicity. Yay, me.

By this point in the year — you know, the last day — I’d at least have some idea of what I might like the new year to look like, maybe even with all my lofty plans spread out by quarter over the whole calendar. My goals, delineated by color-coded category, would leave just enough room for things in life (and me) to change, but still hold all that loud, buzzing energy of NEW, NEW, NEW.

Today, I just wanted to wake up without a fever. (And did!)

You’re probably not surprised to learn I’m one of those Word of the Year kinds of people. For 2023, my word has been Flow, and in the face of grief, rejection, injury, and the myriad of other little challenges life presented this year, I had plenty of opportunity to practice “going with the flow.”

In reality, though, I found “getting into the flow” in my creative life to be the most generative part of adapting, pivoting, and being flexible. Well that, and the grace to let myself have a moment to see, name, and feel the fear, anger, or sadness that often presents itself when things don’t work out the way we anticipate.

So with the proving ground this year and that word have been, what then do I draw from the lessons this very tiresome last week have held?

Tomorrow, I think I’ll keep whispering. My word for 2024 is Soft, after all.

I can imagine that the quietest thing with perhaps the greatest impact will be taking the year off social media (outside of Substack). I’ve spent years experiencing what Felicia Wu Song refers to in her book Restless Devices as “technological disenchantment” and wind up going away for months at a time, as a result. In late 2018, I made a sudden departure that ended up lasting about nine months. It wasn’t long enough. It never really is.

But even more significant than the impact of being away (and whether I will return), I know, must be what fills the space instead:

• Making time for true solitude and rest

• Teaching and learning alongside our three awesome kids

• Growing deeper in partnership with my incredible husband

• Writing letters by hand to friends and family

• Exploring in the kitchen with more cooking and baking

• Taking slow, soulful, walks outside (and gratitude for every. single. step.)

• Finishing this (final??) revision of TOSOH

• Reading and annotating timeless books in community with others

• Watching more sunrises and sunsets

• Completing the first draft of WYE

• Practicing the piano and guitar often

• Showing up here as consistently and authentically as possible

Many of these things I already do, but most of them I don’t do enough or only in ways that feel like food tastes to me right now: like everything has the shape and substance of the thing, but lacks the true flavor or heart of it. That’s what I let the distraction and noise of everything else take from my own everything.

And I’m done with that.

We forget how little is really required of us to be heard when we communicate with people who choose to listen. So many mechanisms are training us to SHOUT MORE and LISTEN LESS, and in 2024, I want to do the opposite of both.

For me, whispering is the start.

Happy New Year to you, dear readers. And if you have just another moment, would you click the button below and let me know the one thing you are looking forward to most in 2024? I can’t wait to hear about it!

See you next year!