2017 is here. Oh, joy.

I can’t say I’m looking forward much at all these days.

My #liveforward mantra is dead silent. There is no word of the year bubbling up from within, no big ideas or events filling up my favorite calendar, no mad purging and clearing and readying. I’ve even lost much of the resistance warrior that resurfaced in the early hours of November 9th.

It’s just a cacophony of shoulds up in here.

And I don’t do should.

For the first time in my life, I’m looking back with longing [though my Instagram #bestnine2016 above was a bit of a head scratcher]. Worse, I’m anxious about what’s to come. It’s antithetical to how I roll: the past can’t be changed; now is everything; the future is ours to create [if we’re lucky]. It’s like 2017 has come before I was ready. Do I cut the tether with force and cross the threshold with false aplomb? Or is there something left to unearth, lessons to impart, business to finish?

Maybe it’s not so bad to dwell in the past, and muddle in the memories, to stem the simplification of time, and put some craft back into it. Maybe we should think of memory itself as an art form, in which the real work begins as soon as the paint hits the canvas. And remember that a work of art is never finished, only abandoned.

― The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Yes, abandoned. My unfinished art is creating a longing bordering on remorse. What if I return to the moments not fully honored last year on The Great Leaving, a then and now as conciliation, memory as art project?

Revisit. Append. Tribute.

So begins a series called simply, obviously: “1 Year Ago.”

A practice that on the surface does little more than catalog moments. I hope it’s daily, I’ll settle for an easy ebb and flow, and I anticipate its natural conclusion. Not abandoned this time, only a gentle crossing into the now.

Tomorrow we travel back to Spain.