And so, let's not-look back.

Because even when I've been absent for months, failing to perform the obligatory year-end wrap-up would be more abandonment than I feel comfy with.

And it goes without saying: 2011 has been significant. It brought the end of eight lovely years in New York. An answer, finally, to the question of what I want to be when I grow up. A book, with a title and a jacket and a life all its own. A new home, one step closer to the kind that I'd like to have permanently, where I can hang up my coat, and sit in a sunny corner, and look out on a sort-of backyard when my brain wants a pause. The humbling, terrifying realization of just what a tenuous, precious thing it is to be healthy.

All in all: changes, lessons, trying new things. I've even taken up yoga -- as in real, actual exercise, despite all previous evidence that any attempt at formal exertion would be punished with the humiliating exposure of private body parts! And y'know what? It's actually kind of fantastic.

...Although, okay, I'm still not quite there with the whole impenetrable zen thing; I cannot, for instance, keep myself from laughing when the instructor says, "And then, ease yourself back into downard-facing dog", and the meditative silence of the room is suddenly punctuated by a prolonged burst of flatulence.

But anyway. The point: this has also been a year of not-posting, and I'm sorry. I've tried and failed any number of times to write about my new home in Connecticut; the reason it's so hard, I think, is that I know we won't be staying. As settled-in as we are here, with our closets and our grill and our very first Christmas tree, it's only a layover on the way to who-knows-what, and so I'm not paying attention the way that I should. And sometime -- maybe even by this time next year -- we'll be picking up again, packing our lives into boxes for transport to the next thing. Whatever it is. And I don't know that, either; I'm not driving this train.

And y'know what? That's actually kind of fantastic, too.

And so, there will be no year-end summary. Right this minute, I'm too busy wondering about what's coming to look back on what already was, especially when what already was was mostly a lot of waiting. And if I want to dwell on the past, I think I'd rather be doing it on behalf of other people -- the ones who submitted the heartbreaking photos and stories to this NYT slideshow of 2011's lost loved ones. Which, more than anything I could offer, is a fitting note to end on.

Especially if, perhaps, you need some reminding about the things that matter after briefly losing your shit at your own loved ones after they totally incinerated a leg of lamb on Christmas Day.

Not that I have ever done that!
Happy New Year!