Documenting a Year—Birthday Reflection and a Lighthouse
Considering an illustrated journal project, a string art metaphor, and photos from the week.
"Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining." — Anne Lamott
Today is my birthday.
June has always been a reflective month, maybe a favorite month. I like November and December a lot, too. June has a few hallmarks, pegs to anchor a bit of floss as I approach and then pass my birthday. This is string art in slow motion, the pattern or path or colorful trail looping, weaving, and winding, but only visible from a distance, from the vantage of years.
I don’t know this year.
My heart isn’t in it.
My heart is too much in it.
I’ve been thinking about whether or not I will start a year project for this new “before 55” year. I’m trying to sort out what will help, what will hook and hold me, what will give me some structure and a nudge until I find my footing as I redefine, as I watch the dominoes fall.
I’ve cut and trimmed and edited and tightened today. I’ve pushed talking about a self-portrait project milestone to another week. Today’s post is still long. Here’s what you will find below:
Thank you for reading.
Amy
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Living an Intentional Year
A few weeks ago, I thought this might be a good year to do a version of my 50 Before 50, changing the number, of course.
It’s been five years since I did the initial project, since I moved through an intentional year, a year I hoped would make me brave, would help me more fully embrace what surrounds me. In my head, it was a year of deliberate wandering, a year of potential discovery, a year of exploring what was within reach simply by moving into the world. It was a (mostly) free list. It wasn’t a bucket list. I don’t keep buckets. Most things were within a mile or two. It wasn’t a project list. Instead, it was a list of tiny treasures, tiny moments of seeing and doing to provide meaningful footholds.
The 50 Before 50 list had a few “leave the house” tasks, things to find or see or revisit… the Yoda fountain, the hidden tile steps, the fairy door in the park. It also had plenty of everyday and mindful tasks, certain books to read or re-read, letters to leave in library books, rice pudding to make, and so on.
The list in 2019 was an exercise in accepting the contours of life, in embracing reality, in simplifying, in being intentional, and in appreciating what is around me.
My oldest was getting ready to start college. He was at summer orientation the day I sat in a hotel breakfast room, making notes on a napkin, sifting through ideas for crafting a year that could anchor me as I adapted to a change that felt vast.
I knew I wanted to do some sort of illustrated documentation project to guide and track the year.
I considered many things, visiting 50 coffee shops or 50 ice cream shops or all of the library branches, for example. As illustration projects go, any of those might be fun, but none of them had the texture and depth I was seeking to anchor a pivotal year. I didn’t want to “have” to go somewhere or “have” to buy something each week. I didn’t think those projects would sustain me.
Everything was changing. My world had shrunk and was continuing to shrink. I wrote a list as a lifeline.
The pandemic started midway through that year. Items on the list were substituted, shuffled, and shifted, but the list was a beautiful map through the year. The list, full of small things, helped keep me present in the year. The year didn’t simply slide by.
Documenting the list in an illustrated journal turned into documenting life, week by week, which turned into the Illustrate Your Week project and weekly prompt set.
I’ve talked about that year and the 50 Before 50 list many times. Today, as I overlay my thoughts about this coming year, I am reminded that deep down, part of that list five years ago was an attempt to make me brave, to push me, to make me reach.
Five years ago, I knew I needed to make myself leave the house, make myself continue to explore and see and embrace and enjoy even if it had to be by myself.
A few weeks ago, before M’s passing, I thought doing a big list might be the right thing this year, a way to anchor myself, to focus, to keep perspective, to keep moving.
That was weeks ago. It feels different now.
Or maybe it feels the same.
I know I am wandering in an interstitial moment. I know the contours are going to snap in place in a few weeks.
I think I might need some kind of list. But I am having trouble understanding how to sort out something that can be guiding this time. I’m having trouble thinking about making a list I will care about. There is a real risk I’ll never leave the house. There is a real risk I’ll become invisible. There is a real risk that I can’t do everything that comes next.
It’s hard to think about a pretty list, a pretty year.
Part of me knows this may be exactly the reason to make a list. The risk of coming unhinged seems high.
The risk of burying my head in the sand seems high.
The risk of watching everything fall down seems high.
The knowledge that there is no one to call is with me every single second.
I do not know how to do all the things I have to do now.
I do not know how to fix all the things that were already broken.
I do not know how to get out, how to reach out, how to move forward.
Finding Light
Going to a nearby lighthouse was on my mom’s list last weekend for her birthday, so we drove to the closest one. We missed the turn-off the first time. Once we got back to it, we parked in front of some kind of sewer management company building, surrounded by sewer management company trucks, in an otherwise empty gravel lot. We sat, looking at the map app, confused. Where was the lighthouse?
The access road was all fenced off. Even though it’s a hostel, everything looked closed.
This was definitely not Pete’s Dragon and Helen Reddy singing “Candle on the Water.”
Disappointed, we decided to drive to the next lighthouse on the coast. As we approached, a large, black, amorphous thing loomed in the distance. My heart sank.
That can’t be it.
As we got closer, we could see that the lighthouse was covered, top to bottom, in scaffolding and black netting. It was impossible to see anything at all about the lighthouse hiding beneath.
We stood on a nearby landing and looked out at the ocean. We listened to the waves and watched two people in canoes paddling through turbulent waters. I felt anxious even watching them being bounced around in those tiny boats. We went inside a small wooden building to look at the huge first order Fresnel lens which had been removed from the lighthouse at the start of the reconstruction.
It was casting rainbows here and there on the walls. I am not sure I understand exactly how the Fresnel lens works, but I did note that they disassembled it into 48 pieces to move it into this building during the renovation.
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