I realize now that that’s dumb. I make the rules for this site and I can change them at will. I need to write.

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Yesterday, I had my wallet splayed out next to my computer. I was in the process of paying bills, an experience that is all the more wrenching these days since my income is deeply inconsistent. But the student loan people get angry when you don’t pay them, so I forced myself to open the appropriate windows, enter passwords and approve the transactions.

As I zipped up my psychologically lighter wallet, its scent caught my notice. It wasn’t one that I associate with me, but belonged to my grandmother. She had a weakness for fine leather goods and so her handbags and wallets were always made from the softest Italian leathers. The kind that feel like butter on the outside, are lined with sturdy satin and smell slightly nutty.

Due to her childhood in the early part of the 20th century, when regular bathing hadn’t quite caught on yet, she had a lifelong fear of the odors of the body. And so she used liberal amounts of perfume and tucked rolls of sugar-free peppermints into all pockets and pouches to keep her breath free. She replaced the mints far more regularly than she ate them, and so the result was there were always an abandoned few rolling around the bottom of a bag, keeping company with a handful of change.

During our summertime visits, my sister and I would be given permission to hunt through the bottoms of bags not currently in use and allowed to keep the money and dusty mints.

I’d already been thinking a great deal about my grandmother lately, when my leather wallet and the scent of the peppermint gum I keep in my purse, sent me time traveling. Come January, it will have been ten years since I moved to Philadelphia. April will make ten years since she’s been gone and May means ten years since I’ve lived in Apartment 2024.

This apartment has been a character in my life in much the same way that friends and family play a role. It’s not just a series of rooms and walls, but an entity with which I have a long and sometimes-trying relationship. Sometimes I just want to be done, to move on to something new. But like any committed relationship, the problems cannot be run from. The only thing I can do is to choose to work them out, make peace and make adjustments until we’re both happy again.

I am certain that my grandfather Phil never imagined when he bought this apartment in 1966 that his 32 year granddaughter would be living in it and writing about it 45 years later.

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.

• If you take your shoes off in the living room, tuck them under the coffee table so that other people don’t trip over them.
• Turn off the light when you leave the room (after one warning, we owed him $.25 a lamp)
• When taking the trash out, the job is not complete until the bag has been replaced.
• Clean up as you go while cooking.
• Do not leave trash around the house (particularly candy/gum wrappers), they will appear in your bed if they’re found outside an appropriate receptacle.

and, most importantly

• Life is lived within a series of communities. Always be aware of your impact on the community around you. This starts with your home community and extends in ripples out into the world. It is of particular importance when you’re driving. You must be aware of how your actions effect the people around you.

As I’ve approached the age at which I’m considering/planning on having kids myself, I am increasingly impressed with the way my parents raised me and I hope to do a similarly able. We shall see (thankfully, it’s not an issue at this time).

(As I was writing this list, I realized that I wrote something similar for Father’s Day a few years ago. I may be running out of ideas).

The way it manifested for me was through feelings of hopelessness. I began to feel like this basket in which I put so many of my career hopes, the one labeled food writer/teacher, was so very, very misguided. Watching all the other food writers and bloggers out there, I questioned what exactly it was that I brought to the table. I couldn’t remember why I had once felt that I had anything to offer and started to nurture a belief that I was shamefully out of my league.

Last Thursday, I went to a chocolate, wine and cheese tasting put on by The Food Trust, and for a while, that experience buoyed me. I talked about food, canning and issues around the way we eat and for awhile, I shed the hopelessness and reconnected with my excitement. But in the last few days, it’s slipped away again (admittedly, a really miserable 4-day jury duty experience this week didn’t help things).

I realize that I’m going to get through these feelings. And I know (at least, most of the time) that in the world of food writing, I bring a number of really wonderful things to the table. However, I also recognize that in this era of closing magazines and newspapers, the options for people who want to deal with food and words in equal measure are scant. Beyond that, I just don’t know.

What do the rest of you do when you find yourselves in a place like this?

Growing up in Portland, one of the things I prided myself on was the fact that I was never one of those people who was plagued by Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). I didn’t mind the long, overcast days and the weeks without sun. I was tough, I was a Pacific Northwesterner.

Then I moved to Philadelphia and began to lose my resilient ways. First, I stopped seeing sandals as appropriate year-round footwear. Then I started using an umbrella (people in the Northwest don’t use umbrellas, they either don a hood or just dodge the raindrops). Finally, I began to long for the sun.

While I still don’t think I’m someone who gets excessively blue because of the lack of sunlight, I’m finding myself desperate for natural light these days. I hate to leave my apartment to go to work, in large part because it means that I’m bidding farewell to the light that comes in our nearly wall-to-wall living room windows. There’s still some light left in the sky when I leave work in the evenings these days and when I walk out into it each evening, I feel a wave of gratitude sweep over me for the absence of darkness.

Part of the problem is that I work in the far corner of the office. I’m tucked back here with some truly lovely people, but their charm doesn’t make up for the fact that we are nowhere near a window.

I know that lots of people find relief for this sort of thing from light boxes. However, I don’t think that’s the solution for me. I don’t think I need the particular UV rays. I need the space and air that comes from having access to light. Unfortunately, there’s no solution for this problem at the moment. For the time being, I will just be grateful for the approach of spring.

One of the things that came up for me (in a emotional sense) during this cold, was the amount of guilt I have around being sick and missing obligations. When I was growing up, I often pretended to be sick in order to have a break from the social demands and discomfort of elementary and middle school. My parents knew that most of my colds, sore throats and upset stomachs were the result of my insecurity and propensity to be the most picked-on kid in the class and so they allowed me the bulk of my “sick” days. However, despite a talent for convincing my body to be sick on cue, I knew that staying out of the classroom wasn’t entirely necessary and so I carried around a little bit of guit about it.

As the years went on, school started to get better and I found I didn’t need to stay away like I had before. However, that sense of guilt about staying home when sick (even when I really and truly was ill) stuck with me. I’ve found in recent years that I’ve felt a need to be given permission to be sick, dragging myself into jobs when I’m near-catatonic in the hopes that someone else will recognize my ailment and say, “Oh you poor girl. You should go home and take care of yourself.” I needed permission from an outside party to be sick and take care of myself.

I’m beyond the worst of that now. I recognize when I’m sick and I do everyone I work with a favor by staying home (no one wants Typhoid Marisa sitting next to them in a poorly ventilated office). However, traces of that guilt still remain and they cropped up like a mofo this time around, despite the fact that I could hardly breathe and my brain ceased functioning sometime Sunday night, only picking back up around 3 pm yesterday afternoon.

I don’t have a solution to this issue (although I do believe that it goes hand in hand with my feeling that I’m never working hard enough or doing a good enough job at my place of employment), but like most juicy internal hang-ups, recognition is always the first step, so I’m putting it out there. Does anyone else react like this when they’re sick? How have you dealt with it?

When I was much younger, I went through stages similar to this one, where I found myself wracked by sympathetic pangs of embarrassment or discomfort for the observed experiences of others. Watching TV as a six-year-old, I’d have to hide my face in a pillow when Michael J. Fox found himself humiliated in Family Ties or Teen Wolf (even if I knew that by the end of the show or movie, he’d have the last laugh). Watching a classmate trip and fall on the playground, I’d need to turn my head and pretend I hadn’t seen it lest her mortification become my own.

I’m hoping that this heightened state of antsy, unsettled, nervousness passes soon. My best guess says that it’s coming from the election and the general uncertainly that the nation is currently feeling in light of the economy, a historic presidential race and an endless war. Toss in there the elevated state of emotion in Philadelphia that came as a result of the World Series win and the fact that my parents moved out of their house over the weekend not entirely because they wanted to, and I’m swimming around in a potent mix of untamed emotion. I have got to get out of this pool.

I had something of a revelation recently that had to do with contentedness, joy and the practice of allowing myself to accept my happiness. I’ve spent many years of my life wishing myself forward, wanting to be anywhere other than where I actually am. I got in the habit of mentally existing a few miles down the virtual road when I was in elementary school. I wasn’t particularly happy in those days, as my tendency towards sincerity (coupled with a love of reading and a chubby belly) made me a target of teasing and playground harrassment. All the trusted adults in my life would tell me that it would get better as I got older and so I started focusing on that time, believing fervently that life would transform when “I got older.”

And they were right, things did get better as I got older. My sincerity and care for other people transformed from a handicap into a virtue of my personality. While I never really lost the chubby belly or the love of reading, these things slowly stopped causing me to stand out. However, the thing I never lost was that belief that my future life was always going to be better than the life I was currently living. So even in times when things were good, I couldn’t appreciate them because I was already focused on what was coming next as opposed to what was right there.

Right now, I’m in one of those phases where things are remarkably good. I have a boyfriend who I adore and with whom I am deeply comfortable. Living with him is fun, never boring and only occasionally irritating. Wonderful people continue to wander through my life and choose to befriend me. I love how close my extended family has gotten since cousins Amy and Jean moved back to Philly from Portland. There’s also going to be a new baby in the family this summer (she’ll be the younger sister to Derek, who has become one of my favorite photography subjects) and we are all excitedly awaiting her arrival.

I have a job that I like, where the people are nice, my commute is a block and a half walk and I don’t feel like I’m being punished for some wrong I did in a previous life. In addition to the full time job, I’m also still working as the lead blogger of Slashfood and every day I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to be a food writer and editor. I feel so proud of what Scott, Angie, Thad and I have created with Fork You (last weekend’s Fork You Live was particularly wonderful, even I was amazed at how delicious the food turned out to be). And I’m going to be writing for my cousin Serena’s Grass Routes Travel Guides, helping with the second edition of the Portland book and co-authoring the Philadelphia one.

The blessings are abundant.

There are also still struggles. My parents are experiencing upheaval on multiple fronts, and don’t know exactly what the future holds for them. It is sometimes painful for me to look on from the outside, knowing that there’s really nothing I can do except listen, love and hold the knowledge that they all things are essentially well. There are others in my family and community who are in crisis, mired in uncertainty, sadness, pain.

I’m learning that no matter what’s going on in the lives of others, I can still appreciate and enjoy my own happiness. New agey folk always talk about living in the moment, and while I’ve always recognized that it was something towards which I should be striving, I never really understood how you could actually get to that space. Now I’m learning to relish the stuff I have, to focus on the all the good things that are happening in my life instead of dwelling on the bad or the things I want that I don’t have yet. I think these may all be steps towards that previously un-attainable goal of the now.

This is not to say that I’ve gotten to a place that is perfect or that I don’t do daily battle to maintain my balance or presence in my current time and space. But it’s getting better and it is a joy.

I always find the transition from Philly to New Jersey a little jarring, especially if I head off the main roads and into the neighborhoods. Much of the architecture reminds me of Portland, with the big old houses and tree-lined streets, that I spend a moment trying to figure out where I am and if it is possible for me to have traveled 3,000 miles in 15 minutes. However, just when I’m totally befuddled, I drive up to a deeply confounding roundabout and I know exactly where I am.

When I arrived at the park, I was actually hugely surprised to discover how easy it was to find parking and then the amphitheater (you know you’ve lived in the middle of a large city for far too long when you look suspiciously at stretches of curb that both unoccupied and without signage). Una and Juli were already there, saving some seats in the bleachers. I found them easily and settled in.

As we watched the opening act, I started thinking about the number of times I’ve seen Dar Williams in concert.  Somehow, I’ve managed to work it out so that I’ve seen her perform every year, nearly always in the spring or summer, since I first moved to Philly in 2002. In the beginning I always saw her with Cindy and Ingrid. Some years Una, Georgia, Shay and Jen came along as well.

Last year, she played the Upper Merion Concert Under the Stars on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. I went with Shay and the guy I was dating at the time. The weather was uncertain and kept threatening thunderstorms all evening, putting the concert in danger and eventually forcing us to run for the car and head home. It was sort of a tense evening, and I remember feeling like it has colored my experience of Dar and her summer concerts.

It was so very different Wednesday night. The weather was beautiful and there was no tension, just the pleasure of being with friends and getting a chance to be within literal spitting distance (not that I would do something like that) from a beloved artist.

I realized that I was becoming Philadelphia’s loudest crank this morning while writing an email.  A friend had sent a short note and had asked how things were going.  I started to write back a list of issues and grievances before stopping with a start, almost as if someone had smacked me in the back of the head.  I suddenly understood that it wouldn’t be fun for him to read a grumpy email, and I didn’t particularly want to be the person who would lay all those irritations down on the feet of a friend.

The crazy part of this is that my life looks pretty darn good these days.  Things with Scott are really wonderful and living together has been amazingly easy.  I have a job that isn’t unpleasant, where people are friendly and kind, where they seem to like having me around and where, in just another month, I’ll have health insurance again for the first time in nearly two years.  Things at Slashfood are going well.  People keep watching Fork You and coming out to our live shows at Foster’s Homeware.  And I made a successful batch of yogurt the other day.

Why do I always focus on what I perceive as the negative or wanting aspects of my life?  I seem to have lost the ability to be appreciative of the things I have.  So, I’m trying to change, just a little bit.  I am going to try to be aware of the moments when I feel myself heading into the land of whine.  I am going to make a conscious choice to tell people I’m doing well, instead of saying with a sigh, “I’m okay.”  And I’m going to start searching out those moments of human interaction and positive connection, which used to be such a large part of my blog.