How to end a year

Get a massage. It’s been nearly two months since I fell at Stormont. The lasting damage has been to my shoulder, which did not respond well to taking so much weight on impact. I went for a half hour massage this evening to see if the masseuse could shake something loose. Two weeks later, as I write, the shoulder still hurts. But I think the knots she got out of my trapezius had to at least help.

When I look back at 2015, the year is more in focus than most years. I wrote about a dozen papers for the classes I had from January through May. I had visitors in June, July, and August. I spent two weeks in Zurich at a summer school in July. August and September was crunch time for my thesis. Post-thesis celebrations took place in Donegal and Greece. Oh, and I helped rehabilitate an old house. The year ended with my so-far futile efforts to find a job.

Most years, I look back and I’m not really sure where the year went. In Chester Springs, I spent an inordinate amount of time clearing land, specifically cutting vines out of trees and pulling up multiflora rose and Russian olive. I enjoyed it and yet I saw it as a trap. There was always more forest to be cleared, always cleared land to be defended. But I created lovely gardens out of dense thickets of vines and thorn bushes. This is the springhouse garden.

And a spot in the springhouse garden that I never sat in and enjoyed.

I don’t miss the farmhouse or the gardens at all. It’s weird. Humans are so wonderfully adaptable. Whenever I do get back into paid employment, I’ll have to find some way to enjoy my evenings. But I think I’ll be OK if a future pastime does not involve a chainsaw, a mattock pick axe, or loppers.

I’m proud of what I accomplished in 2015 and I’m excited to see what I will get up to in 2016. For the third year running, it will involve a lot of changes. But I’m optimistic that I will find something to do that will be challenging and interesting.
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