Palaces of patience

Because, as humans, we tend to start counting with "1" and not "0", 2020 is technically the last year of this decade and not the first year of a new decade. But because, as humans, we like seeing larger changes (like the two-digit shift from "19" to "20" and not the one-digit change from "20" to "21"), yeah, the end of the decade is upon us. It's like how tomatoes are a botanical fruit and a culinary vegetable, or how Pluto is now a generational thing.

Anyway. Left to my own devices, I generally don't go in for temporal landmarks, because no matter how you slice them they're all arbitrary. Plus, New Year's stuff tends to come burdened with a whole lot of cultural baggage that I don't find awfully conducive to how I want to live my life.

At the same time, the sheer weight of that cultural baggage makes it hard to ignore, and it ends up taking on a kind of significance beyond my ability to sweep away, so I feel like I should mark it in some way.

So here's what I'll say: the past decade has been an awfully weird one. I've had a lot of challenges, a lot of failures, and a lot of triumphs. Most of the things I thought I'd manage, I didn't; most of the things I have managed, I would never have imagined. I'm in a good place now and I don't have any desire to leave it in the immediate future, but I also don't think I want to stay here forever, and that's okay. I've learned a lot, I've grown a lot, and I've taught a lot, and long may that continue.

And, as per most years, I'm going back to re-memorize Richard Wilbur's poem, Year's End. Despite the fact that there is no snow here.