Unpause.

I had so many Big Feelings for the first several months of last year.  Grief yes, but also intense love and gratitude.  But as the year wore on and didn't bring much good news with it, the big feelings shrank and twisted into smaller, uglier feelings.

It didn't seem worth recording my small mean self-pitying thoughts for posterity, so I haven't been.  I won't lie, though, I definitely had them and sometimes still have them.  At their worst they caused me to have moments of physical anxiety.  I'd be driving to work and suddenly feel my pulse racing and feel as if I couldn't get a deep enough breath.  I didn't want to do anything that would etch those thought patterns deeper into my brain.

So I paused from the blog and just tried to live my life.  I read, got out with friends, worked.  I went fishing and crabbing with S and L, and we screamed with delight and sometimes terror upon any kind of catch or wildlife spotting.  (We saw a great white shark pass not four feet below our small boat.)  I signed up to volunteer at the SF SPCA and ogled the puppies.  I did -- am doing -- a lot of vinyasa yoga with M, which I think truly helps me get out of my own head.  By the time every class ends and I collapse into savasana, dripping sweat, I am too wiped to feel or think anything but how wonderful it is to lie flat on the ground, palms up, mind and body quiet.  I love it when the instructor sounds a singing bowl into the silence, the hum of infinity ringing quietly in my ears, the only sound I can hear.  I love when the instructor opens class with a little lecture on mindfulness or oneness, and says at the close of the class, "The light in me sees and recognizes the light in you."  And I love love love going to eat pho with M after class.  We show up at pho joints all over the city with crazy sweat hair and hands smelling like rubber yoga mat, and hoover broth and noodles and jalapeños into our mouths and exclaim over how lovely it all is.  And finally, D and I were lucky enough to be able to go to South America on an amazing, challenging, nature-filled, life-affirming trip over Mila's first birthday and the holidays, which I will write about shortly.

I think, I think I am somewhere different than I was even as recently as September.  It's 2015 now, and I am eyeing it warily, but hopefully.