there is time, here, at the end of this year, for reflection, for taking stock of what the year endowed, what i have done. time for sitting still and thinking slowly on what it is that is going on right now and how i need to look forward. i need desperately at the moment to consider the future and all its promises. i need to create what it should be in the eye of my mind and fill my heart with the hope of all the steps from here to there. unfortunately, i know not how i feel. i am weighed down by the evidence of my distress without the key to unraveling it from its center. there is so much to be done, so much for me to do. a million tiny ideas bury themselves in my head and i must write them down lest i forget. but can i even do half the things i wish to do in the time allotted to me? is there space on this earth and in my life, in all my future to accomplish everything or simply enough?

i cannot keep these thoughts straight. i want to hope for my future. i want to plan, to envision it. i want to list it out for the new year and know where i am going. i want to do better than i am doing, than i have done. mostly, though, that is all part of the procedure for accomplishing feeling better. the lists of things to do, the generating of ideas, the picture of the future, of my path - it's all part of the plan to make me sense in myself that who i am and what i do is okay. if i can muster hope, then i can reduce the stress levels in my daily life through the action plan and integrated understanding of my life as a journey and each measured step as movement toward the larger goals. if i can just muster hope! then i will feel better and feeling better will lead to doing better and doing better will lead to feeling better!

this entire autumn has been a build-up of stress and pent-up frustration, seething out as anger. i hate it. i want better for myself and for my family. i want to do the things i want to do, to not worry so much and focus on the things i'm missing. i want to transform the worry and the obsession and the sadness into more productive ways of thinking - into hope and compassion and space for improvement. i want to shift my own perspective and i want to feel supported in doing so. i want to share it. i want not to live this life of treading water. i want to move. i want not to feel trapped by mud, by bad habits and pessimistic ways of thinking. i want to improve on everything. i want to accentuate all the things i've done in recent months and use that as fuel for being, not to dwell on my misfortunes or my failings, but to use my failings as evidence for knowing better, as experiences for learning.

i wonder if i set my sights too high, if i have somehow dissected it all incorrectly and made a wrong blueprint for which to go by. even still, these desires are but abstractions. they exist in the feeling world of my head and heart and are so difficult to quantify, to consider in a tangible manner, to articulate for consideration or for plan of action. so the plan is simple, yet there are no rules and there are no landmarks for recognizing where choices exist. it is a feeling thing, a walking blind, an imagining the unseen and simultaneously creating it. it is walking down paths of smoke, drifting left and right, sideways and rightways, forward and back, riding the way like water. there is no knowing it by logic and reasoning. it is a wisdom of unplottable intuition.

now i will make lists.