Happy Solstice, Feeling a Little Under the Weather on the Darkest Day of the Year, Imagining 2020, and Manuscript Redux

Me with my Solstice tree

Happy Solstice!

Yes, from here on out our nights are getting shorter, and our days are getting longer. It definitely doesn’t feel like that can be true here in Seattle, but we light our candles anyway, read poetry, and Glenn is baking, so I basically feel like we’ve covered all the important Solstice traditions, anyway.

I’m working on a vision board for 2020 and on both of my poetry manuscripts to send out in the new year. I’ve been sick, so extra downtime on my hands has meant a little more time for projects like this. I find it’s very hard to revise a whole poetry manuscript without a pretty significant amount of quiet time to think about it, and like a lot of writers, I like to put out all the poems on the table or floor or wall and see how they work together, or if they don’t. I’m not good at craft-type projects but I continue to try to do a collage project for each year, the idea being to set your inspiration/aspiration for every year. Also very Solstice-y, right?

Under the weather on the darkest, rainiest day of the year in Seattle

A Little Under the Weather on the Darkest (and Rainiest Day of the Year)

I’ve been sick this week, and Friday, though not technically the Solstice, was the darkest day of the year in Seattle, as well as the rainiest. Tiny streams became rivers, landslides and floods threaten, and every time I ducked outside I felt more like a drowned rat. Sometimes I think it’s important to show the good and the bad days in the life of a writer with a chronic illness like MS, not just the good.

That’s why I included this picture Glenn snapped of me yesterday, in my “Mistletoe and Mimosas” t-shirt, mustering all the holiday spirit I could. I felt sick to my stomach (thanks to the new medications the doctors have me on), I hadn’t slept more than two hours in a row for three nights, and just wasn’t feeling my usual upbeat self. Sometimes being sick slows you down, and keeps you

from doing the things you’d rather be doing. I’d certainly rather be healthy for Christmas (and not getting an emergency root canal on New Year’s Eve Eve), but sometimes this is the reality – I’m not my shiniest, happiest, self.

Sylvia as the ghost of Christmas Presents

Looking Forward to a New Decade

But I’m hoping 2020 includes plenty of healthy days, more wins than losses, more time for friendship and less time resting and recovering. Turning into a new decade reminds me that we have to look forward to the future with more than fear in it, even when you have a chronic illness that tends to worsen over time, and has no cure (yet). I have to hang on to hope. Hope that they will find more effective treatments for the things that are wrong with me. Hope that I will get good news about my next book manuscripts, or even an unexpected fellowship, maybe. Hope that I will love more new books and make more good friends and get to discover beautiful things around me. Even the days when I am sick and the day is cold and gloomy, I want to be able to discover new things.

Light Post at my house on the Solstice Night

We only have the days we have, and I want to spend as many of them filled with things that give me joy – poetry, spending time with friends, spending time in nature, and trying to appreciate the little things—a new song or book to love, the way the light reflects off a streetlight, or even a cat hiding in a box of presents—along the way. I laughed tonight watching Eddie Murphy on SNL and enjoyed Lizzo singing with so much joie de vivre. I sat by the fireplace and drank herbal tea and looked through pictures of the last year. We can live in fear of the unexpected tragedies and misfortunes that await us, but we can also expect unexpected beauty, humor, and happiness.  May your days have more light than darkness!