Slumps & Starts

I know it's a holiday in England, but I consider Boxing Day, December 26th, to be one of the worst on the calendar. The gifts, abundant and attractively arrayed throughout the month under the tree, have been opened, leaving a heap of torn wrapping paper and ripped ribbon. Everyone seems to have gained five pounds in 24 hours. Half a dozen Pyrex dishes need washing. Bustling, eager shoppers have turned into lengthy lines of sour-faced discontents holding the literal bag. The radio station that played Christmas tunes for six weeks goes back to broadcasting soft rock, an oxymoron for lousy music. Pine needles litter the floor. It's time to painstakingly wrap all the delicate ornaments and put away the cheery mementos your kids made when they were in preschool.

After an eventful fall packed with festive occasions (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah and Christmas) and great football, against a backdrop of beautiful autumnal leaves, we face the stark, cold month of January when we all resolve to make improvements: lose weight, join a gym, quit smoking or give up some other nagging vice. The credit card bills arrive in the mail. The party's over. It's time for stalwart action. By mid to late February most people abandon their resolutions and go back to overeating, puffing those coffin nails and spending more time on the couch.

Years ago I read of a man who did not make a New Year's resolution of his intent to meditate every day, he made it a vow. Taking a vow, as anyone who's gotten married or joined a convent knows, is a bigger deal than resolving to do something. There's a spiritual, serious aspect to it. It's supposed to be for keeps. It takes a sort of discipline unfamiliar to most of us born in the middle of the last century up to the present. Ask any teenager if he's willing to give up his Xbox, Facebook or iPhone for an extended period of time. Few, if any, could meet such an abstentious goal for Lent, let alone a whole year. We live in a culture that, for a price, will satisfy our demands before we're even aware of them. Because we're surrounded by limitless possibilities, it's all the more difficult to deny ourselves something we think we need, when in fact we're burdened by the weight of these desires, satisfied or not, as any good Buddhist will tell you.

So what am I willing to do without in 2012? I have the usual laundry list: more exercise, less crappy food, more books and less TV. But I have a rather lofty intention, one I've postponed innumerable times, that is crying out for my undivided attention come January 1st. To finish my novel. I'm making this declaration on my blog so that I'm actually going on record. Hopefully, the eventual eating of humble pie required by not meeting my commitment will be incentive enough to spur me on. Sure, I want to be skinny, healthy and more literate. But I can't live with myself if I don't vow to complete something decades in the making. My mother, a journalist who made her living by writing, often declared over cigarettes and Chardonnay, "Just wait till I write my novel." After many years of hearing this proclamation I asked her where her novel was. She said, "It's in my head."

She is no longer with us and no novel lives on in her absence. Her unfulfilled promise is part of what dogs my days as a fiction writer. I was once quite determined not to chalk up my story to the "dreams deferred" category. The older we get the harder it is to muster the drive that seized us in our youth. We're all too willing to leave our neglected objectives unmet, especially with society telling us we're over the hill. Charles Frazier, author of Cold Mountain, the 1997 National Book Award winner, once said prior to his novel's publication that if nothing else, he wanted to have a finished manuscript he'd be proud to tuck away in the attic. I doubt I'm destined for the bestseller list, but I hope my long-languishing opus will someday see the light of day.