Here’s the Truth: I’ve Had Better Years.

I turned 50 in January and slid in to 2014 not particularly feeling my age — that seems like the best one could ask for from what is meant to be such a significant birthday. Kurt Vonnegut wrote about turning 50 in Breakfast of Champions; he described it as crossing the peak of a roof and seeing the downhill slope before him. If I did not feel so defeatist in January, well, I am glad to see the back of this year now.

It was a good year for travel.

It is good to look back to see where I’ve been; it makes me feel less melancholy. Sedona’s blue skies and red rock, that snowstorm that blanketed Philadelphia in silence, the fireflies in the Indiana bean fields, and the rainbows over the Grand Canyon. I was invited to speak and/or teach in Alaska and Chiapas, Mexico and Muncie, Indiana and Corte Madera in magical Marin County, California. I drove over beautiful McKenzie Pass in Oregon during the first snow of the season, out of the plains, up into black lava fields dusted with white, and then, down into the Willamette Valley where Fall was arriving.

But it was a hard year for work.

When I was on assignment, it was easy — I had a job to do and it was just work, as lovely and painless as it can be. But I’ve also been preoccupied much of the year with a weird kind of malaise, a sort of “What’s the point?” attitude when facing the keyboard. The bread and butter work that pays my bills was thin this year, so I spent a lot of time thinking about how to make money as a travel writer and not liking the answers. I said yes to some gigs because I couldn’t afford to be choosey, not because they were great gigs, and that’s never fun.

I suck at being a starving artist. I’m much happier and more productive as a self-supporting artist who has a solid (if intermittent) income stream. Right brain is fine if left brain is busy, but with left brain idle so much this year, right brain had a lot of meddlesome company. “Whatcha doing? Why are you doing it like that? What are other people doing? How come they’re making money and you’re not? That ain’t right, are you going to just sit there while that’s going on? Oh, hey, is that another bill?” Instead of left brain finding new ways for right brain to succeed, left brain spent a disproportionate amount of time taking things apart and analyzing them and not putting them back together again.

There were other distractions too.

The repatriation of my husband to Austria — it’s complicated. My interminable, expensive, and sometimes painful dental work — I am without the depth of language to express my gratitude for your help with that. Throwing the brakes on the band’s seemingly unstoppable trajectory towards something, who knows what, but it felt like it was moving, that’s for sure, and now, it’s not. More. Some things more difficult than others, but all of them turning my brain, a normally borderless land, into one of those mazes you hold in your hands, rolling the little marble around past bends and obstacles until it either falls into a hole or finally, makes it to the goal so you can start over again.Neither one of those is a winning scenario, unless you like knocking up against barriers, repeatedly. I don’t.

I feel okay about what’s coming, though.

I gave a little bit of time to an environmental policy organization; they’re looking into ways to fund my involvement with their work. I’m in talks with a travel technology startup; they want my skills and perspective. This could be a great gig and I adore the guy that recruited me, I really want to work with him again, but there are some hurdles. There’s a long term project I’ve been cooking with a super smart friend; it looks like the critical missing piece has appeared, but we still have work to do to make it real. I’m being intentionally vague on all this stuff because I don’t want to count any chickens, but the leads are good.

I’m also taking a chunk of time this winter to work on my writing. I decided to do two things. First, give myself some slack for not writing much this year. And second, I carved out the time to just do some work. No, I can’t afford it, but if I don’t reinvest in myself as a writer, no one will.

I’m not alone in this.

I know a lot of creative people who were frustrated by this year. We asked each other “What the hell?” repeatedly — why were we having such a hard time of it? Part of me wonders if, a few years from now, we’ll look back to discover that there was a sort of industrial revolution of creativity in which we were mechanized. (See what I mean about my left brain?)

But part of me just thinks, “Oh, some years are hard, that’s just all there is to it.” One of the Fates got up to make coffee and when she stood, the loom shifted a little, making for an uneven weave. “Look what you’ve done,” said the second Fate, “now we’ll have to undo all that work,”and she started tearing it apart. And the third Fate, shaking her head, said, “Just go do what you were going to do, I will take care of it,” but now there’s an uneven place where the knots don’t quite line up. It holds together okay, and only those who look closely at the work will see the flaws, but they are there all the same.

So, what now?

I don’t know. This, I guess.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

–Leonard Cohen

This seems as good a starting place as any. By letting in the light.