(Photograph by Paul Octavious)

When January comes, my emotions swing on a pendulum. One side of me, my logical/rational (and often more cynical) side says Happy Birthday Gregorian Calendar! It feels like nothing special; it’s just another day in the system we’ve created. Resolutions go as rapidly as they came, and those desires of change quickly turn to guilt of failed ambition. Sometimes I feel as though I should have been born in the Enlightenment era. Logic wins!

But another part of my schizophrenic self, the more Judaic, mystical side, is hopelessly romantic about beginnings & endings & beginnings &. I desperately, deeply need them both. Births mark the beginning of something new while also reminding us of what was lost with the arrival of newness. Deaths are painful, but in that pain lies the hope of resurrection, of another birth that is coming soon. Births and deaths are inseparable, and each are fully known only when we are willing to examine one in the context of the other.

So with 2010 comes the death of 2009 and the birth of a new year. For me, 2009 brimmed with experiences of life and death. In the past few weeks I’ve thought To hell with 2009. May it never be again. And when I speak those words images immediately come to mind of beautiful moments that were so full of life and light. If I hadn’t experienced x then I wouldn’t have had so many cups of coffee with y. I can replace x and y with dozens of people and places. Tragedy and beauty. Lovers who shouldn’t be, yet are.

In reflecting over the past year, and often in the past years, I’m reminded of how much I have enjoyed writing here and interacting with so many people that I would otherwise probably not have met. This blog itself has experienced deaths and rebirths. A few of my friends have endlessly encouraged me to write and create for my own health and healing, and they’re the ones who told me to let my blog experience a rebirth. In my own shame I at first said no, that I had killed it and that was that, but they reminded me of how we do not live in a finite existence, that we believe in resurrection, in the small and the large things in life.

With that, I thank you for reading and sticking with me through thick and thin, through my sarcasm, rants on religion, photographs, travels, projects, cursing, emails about my cursing, IM conversations with no context, Twitter screenshots with no context, context with not context, and sentences like this that ramble on and on. Truly, thank you. As much as I don’t want to admit it because it’s so cliché, I really do love writing and putting photographs here. It keeps me creating, and it’s good for me to work through motivations and desires to be seen and heard, to have a microphone, and to have a voice.

2010 will, inevitably, be full of births and deaths. Writing that sentence I thought Please God, no. But they will happen, and in both I will pray, because sometimes it feels like that’s all I can do. And, as far as I can presume, I’ll document all the life, death, sarcasm, quotes out of context, religious views, art influences, and ridiculousness that I, at least, find humorous.

One change to this blog happened immediately with the new year: on the sidebar you might notice a few advertisements. One is static from Mars Hill Graduate School, where I attend and a school that I will endlessly promote because of how much I have loved it these past three years. The transformative processes and experiences are too many to write about or describe in ways that give them the weight they deserve. I love MHGS and will weep in June when I graduate. The other ads are from the Fusion Network, and ad firm that promotes mostly tech-related services. It’s like a little family, but Canadian. I use a lot of the products that they advertise and they pay attention to design, which I appreciate. Click on the ads if you are so inclined. Apply to Mars Hill and buy stuff from Fusion. The internet told me to do it, so I did it!

2010, I’m ready for you. Be kind, and I’ll do likewise.

Here’s to the birth of a new year. Thanks for reading.

(Photograph by John Carl)