📆 January '24: Monthly Wrap-Up
'This is all Jan's fault.' - Marcia Brady's inner monologue in A Very Brady Sequel
Dear Friend,
January is named after the Roman god Janus, who you’ve probably seen <waves hands> “around.” He (and he) is a rich metaphor, this two-faced god—one face looking forward, one face looking backward. Janus was the god of (and yeah, I’m using Wikipedia here to ensure I’m getting this right) beginnings, gates, time, duality, doorways, passages, frames, and endings—transitions, really.
How fitting, then, that Romans chose to honor him at this time of year on their Julian calendar, the forerunner to (minus the way they handled the extra1 time it takes Earth to circle the sun) our leap-year-some Gregorian calendar.
Even now, this is so often the time of year we start to prematurely judge how our heady early-January resolutions (or insistence on lack of them) feel now that we have test-driven our decisions, possibly already into the ground.
Yet, this year is practically a newborn! We have 11 more months—and a bonus day!—to work and play away our 2024. In fact, we have a new chance with every new day, hour, minute, and second—and, luckily, even one second is enough time to pick up our pen!
My Substack posts from this month (year, really!) were:
And two less-fresh-but-still-solid options:
📌 How I Read Picture Books - which ties into my Evernote post above
📌 If Someone's Just Not That Into Your Work—or Even You—It's Okay! - never a bad reminder
Here is a quick glimpse of the many picture books I was jealous of this month. You can read why (plus my reviews of many others) on my Goodreads reviews.
I can’t help but check out any art on the walls of the places I go. If you’ve ever wondered, “Who would buy a painting hanging in a pizza place?”—me; I have done this. Seattle coffee shop walls are particularly fabulous for seeing things one has never seen before.
As promised…here is “Us” by Shel Silverstein from Where the Sidewalk Ends. (I hope you already own this book; if not, it’s always had a very high laugh-per-dollar value, and I highly recommend it!)
Your friend who is ALSO grateful for things big and small (including not having a second, or third, argumentative head),
5 hours, 48 minutes, and 56 seconds (or thereabouts) more than 365 days.
Yes, that explains a lot about how I have felt about this Jan!
A wonderful, whimsical post that made me want to dig into that painting too! And thank you for the Shel Silverstein poem. I woke up today thinking about The Giving Tree so it was wonderful to read another of Shel Silverstein's works.