Last week, when I was back in Portland, I spotted the Pony Soldier marquee that you see above. I happened to have camera in hand (I was not the one driving at the time) and so snapped a picture of the message. “A goal not in writing is simply a wish*.” So, in the spirit of dreaming big, declaring to the universe what I want and transforming those wishes into goals, here are the things I’ll be working on and towards in the coming year.

Body and Self

• Take vitamins regularly. I grew up in a vitamin-taking family and so my singular act of rebellion in high school and college was to stop taking vitamins of any sort. I was very vocal in my vitamin rejection, announcing to my parents that they were a waste of time and money. However, over the years, I’ve come to realize that I function better when I add a few vitamins to my system, including daily doses of C and D (sitting in a windowless cubicle for 8-10 hours a day means very little sun exposure for this already pale girl).
• Move more. While I was home in Oregon, my mom and I took a walk along the path in Maywood Park nearly every day. It felt so good to be outside and to be moving. This year, getting my body moving every day, be it a walk outside, a run on the treadmill or even just stretching on my ugly carpet, will be a regular thing.
• Time to wind down at the end of the day. So often, I spend the evening plopped on the couch, staring incoherently at the television until around 11:30, at which point, I leap up to do the dishes and get myself ready for the next day. This means that I climb into bed fifteen or twenty minutes after midnight, with my body revved and my mind racing. It is not conducive to good sleep. I will be getting these tasks of life done earlier, so that I can crawl into bed with a little time to read and get quiet before turning out the light.

Work and Creativity

• Write some books. Since last May, I’ve been working with a publishing company in the hopes of writing a canning cookbook or two. As the Magic 8 Ball might say, I “cannot predict now” whether these particular books will get made. However, I will not be deterred. I will write a canning book. Scott and I will self-publish a Fork You cookbook (we’ve been talking about it for years now, it’s time to finally do it). And, I will work on turning all those essays I wrote for my thesis into something more.
• Make canning videos. Scott and I have been making food video since 2006. It’s time to focus the camera on the canning pot and making some entertaining, useful videos. Because, to be perfectly honest with you all, this is what I want to do. My dream is to have a food show (one with sponsors, investors and advertisers who would make it possible for this to be a full-time gig) that features canning, local foods, u-pick farms, farmers markets, homemade yogurt, home-baked bread and the basics of doing it from scratch while living in the heart of a big city.
• Learn to use Photoshop. Back in the summer, Scott upgraded my camera situation, getting me a Nikon D90 to replace my D50. It takes very nice pictures (and, thanks to the ease and relative cheapness of digital photography, I can keep taking pictures until I get something lovely, straight out of the camera). But often I wish that I knew how to tweak those nice photos into the gorgeously vivid images I see all around the internet. I make minor adjustments in iPhoto, but I can’t do much there.

The Woo-Woo**

• Love more. Myself, my body, my husband, my family and my world.
• Trust more. Everything I’ve ever experienced has shown me that it always works out in the end (typically in ways that I’d never even conceived). And yet, I fret. I’m exhausted by all the worry. It’s time to skip it and just trust.
• Hope more. The world is in transition. The planet is warming, we are inundated by stuff and the waste increases everyday. It would be easy to feel hopeless in the face of all that. However, instead I choose to be hope-filled. I hold the knowledge that this is a time of potential and that all is most certainly not lost.

Happy 2010. May it be so.

*This appears to have been said (with slightly more punctuation) by motivational speaker Mac Anderson. I was sort of hoping that it was the brainchild of some poetic motel desk clerk, but no.

**My all-purpose word for the mystical, intangible world of spirit and love.

Scott and I got married to one another on Saturday, September 26th. It was an amazing day and while the weather wasn’t quite as warm as I would have liked, the rain held off until just after we finished cleaning up. The food our friends and family brought to share was delicious, the cakes that I made were perfect and people had a really good time.

One of our goals with this wedding was to keep the ceremony portion short, as we were asking people to stand for it. So we kept our vows brief, funny and to the point. Here’s what we said to each other.

Marisa, to Scott

For the years that we were nothing more than friends, I swore up and down to anyone who would listen that you were not the man for me. It wasn’t until you started dating someone else that I realized how deeply I adored you (despite the fact that you didn’t have a driver’s license and that you are undeniably a picky eater). Now, I can’t imagine my life without you.

Scott, I am delighted to be marrying you today, and I vow to you to love you for the rest of my life, even when you’re painfully stubborn, when you turn up your nose at my sautéed string beans or when you fling your dirty socks across the room. I promise to support your dreams and will never stop encouraging you to write those novels we all know are in you. I promise to respect your Star Trek cards, weekly D & D dates and general geekery, and appreciate your similar courtesy for my jars, cookbooks and sundry kitchen implements.

Scott, I vow to give you the quiet time you need and to be the one in our relationship who deals with the minutia of daily living. I solemnly swear that I’ll never stop laughing, even if things get momentarily grim. And most of all, I vow to always embrace your whimsy, your humor and all your wacky charms.

You are my person, my favorite boy and I love you with all I’ve got.

Scott, to Marisa

If you asked me 10 years ago, or even 3 years ago, if I would be getting married to a hippie, at a potluck wedding officiated by a lesbian I would have laughed at you. And yet, here we are and words can’t express how happy I am. Funny how life works, isn’t it?

Marisa, you and I are complete opposites in many ways. I’m tall, you’re short. I hardly know what day of the week it is, you’re always on top of the details. I’m funny and you’re… well maybe we can move on.

Marisa, I vow to do as I am told most of the time. I promise to not make your life any more difficult than I normally do. I promise to talk you through moments of panic and anxiety with a smile and love in my heart. I vow to at least try and express my feelings more than fortnightly, and above all else I promise to be your partner in all of life’s adventures and misfortunes.

You are the love of my life, the reason I wake up in the morning, the spring in my step, and I can’t imagine life without you.

Right now, this is the weather forecast for the day of our wedding. This is perfect. I need it to stay exactly like this. If you are so inclined (and if you believe in such things), I would so appreciate positive thoughts and prayers in the direction of the weather, in the hopes that it will indeed be clear, sunny and perfectly temperate on the day of the wedding.

Much has happened in the last few weeks. I turned 30 on May 14th, much to my amazement. It boggles me to think that I’ve been knocking around this life for a full three decades. When I was younger, my grandma Bunny would often comment that her first reaction upon looking at herself in the mirror each morning was surprise. Her initial, fleeting thought was always, “Who is that old lady?” Inside herself, she didn’t feel any different than she had when she was young and so it was jarring to see that each day her outsides were changing while her essence remained the same.

When she’d tell me this as a child, I’d nod my head with great understanding, while thinking her crazy. I knew that I felt older with each passing year. Didn’t every number come with greater freedom and responsibility? Of course your insides changed and aged.

Now I understand what she meant. I look at myself and know that I don’t feel different in any essential way from how I knew myself to be five or six years ago. I know that I’ve adopted more of the trappings of adulthood over the last few years; the home, the possessions, the job, the degrees, the life partner. And yet.

I am not unhappy to be here. In fact, I’m quite pleased to have finally shaken off the uncertainty and struggle that graced my 20′s. I am grateful to be refining my path towards work that I love and I am filled with delight that I am marrying Scott, the guy who was my most wonderful friend, long before I slowly slid into love with him. So I recognize these grown-up things in my life, while noticing that I don’t feel any older. It’s a strange and miraculous thing.

When I voted in 2004, I had high hopes that John Kerry would pull out a victory but I was disappointed once again.

After eight years of inept leadership, I am so absolutely delighted that my candidate has finally won an election. I feel like this outcome has given me back the right to be hopeful for a brighter, kinder future. May wisdom, compassion and love guide President Obama through the next eight years.

Yesterday felt like New Year’s Day. Starting at 7 am, we could hear the thousands of people already out lining Market and Broad Streets, waiting for the noon-time parade to start. They were hooting and yelling, screaming with voices hoarse with multiple days of victory celebrations. When I left for work at 9 am, everyone outside was dressed in red and were equipped with beer cans and bottles in hand, getting their buzz on early.

Most of my co-workers left for the day at 11:30 am to see the parade before heading down to the ceremony down at the stadiums. I headed out of the office a little while later, to snatch a glimpse of the parade and take an extra-long lunch (we got an extra hour). I had my camera with me and so wandered between 18th and 19th, taking pictures. While the parade was running, I wasn’t able to get within half a block of Market Street. I stood back, enjoying the energy and enthusiasm of the crowd. Some people tried to keep up with the parade and so ran along Ludlow Street, trying to catch multiple views of the players.

Now, on February 25th, 2008, I’m starting another job, this time as the Special Projects Web Producer at the Greater Philadelphia Tourism and Marketing Corporation.  I traveled my new commute this afternoon, the entire block and a half of it, in order to sign the offer letter.  As I walked down Ludlow Street, I realized that I am going to become really familiar with that stretch of alley.

I wasn’t actually intending to get a full time job, I was really hoping to make the freelance thing work.  But when the opportunity to apply for this job came my way I decided to go for it and from the first interview I could see that it would be a good fit.  Lucky for me, they thought so too.  So starting Monday, I’m back to the 9 to 5 schedule and I’m really looking forward to it.

Several months ago, I struck up an email correspondence with one of the editorial types over at Culinate, an online food magazine.  We chatted back and forth about food writing and Portland.  Eventually she suggested that if I was ever inclined, I’d be welcome to send a piece or two her way, for possible publication.  Being the novice food writer that I was (and still am) I was deeply flattered that she would even suggest that my stuff was good enough for the pages of her site.  I ran to my thesis draft, cutting down one of the pieces until it was an appropriate size.  Thrillingly, they accepted it.

The piece went live today and I am so tickled to see it in digital print.  It is about Pinch Pie, my family’s traditional birthday dessert (that I’ve written about ’round these parts before) and how my grandmother initially made it as a Valentine’s Day treat for her first husband, Dick.  The recipe, with all the hard learned lessons I’ve acquired over the years, can be found here.

However, during the flight back to Philly, I started to realize that I was heading back to a life that looked fairly different from the one I had left only a few weeks before.  I was done with school, my roommate was moving out (leaving me with an apartment that would be all mine for the first time since 2002) and I had a relationship to return to.  It was sort of jarring but also exciting at the same time.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want out of this next year.  I feel like I’m poised at the start of some really great opportunities and I want to make sure that I choose to do things that will make me most happy instead of leaping at things out of fear and uncertainty (which has often been my way of operating in the past).

So I’m declaring 2008 the year of happiness.  It is the year in which I really start to support myself as a writer and multimedia content producer (especially in the area of food).   It’s the year when I make time to exercise (I managed to do that in 2005 fairly well) and when I start working my way through the vast number of unread books in my apartment.  I’m not making these commitments to myself as resolutions, but instead promises to myself to create my life in my highest and most ambitious interests.

May your next year be as wonderful as I believe mine will be.

I had the opportunity to listen to two and half hours of the best live music I’ve heard in along time last night. My dad had been planning the concert, a fundraiser for People of Faith for Peace, for months and despite cold weather, lots of rain and the threat of snow, more than 125 people came out and filled the seats of Portland’s Old Church.

I took two snippets of video last night, both of which are embedded here. The first is of my dad, singing a song he wrote for me when I was a newborn that is called “Song for the Children.” The second is a song by my sister called, “Are You Still in Love With the World?”