Each new year brings renewed anticipation.
Will this be the year?
For some, the anticipation may take the form of dread
as they fear an apocalypse or some personal catastrophe.
For others,it may be the hope of transcendence and transformation.
I am seeking the later.

The evening sky,
passing on the last light of day,
like a painting
from the British romantic landscape painters,
or perhaps the Hudson River School,
hung over the interstate
on my drive home.
Will this be the year?

Yet day after day,
the drive regains its old familiarity
and too easily sinks into monotony or tedium.

Can I keep the image of the nineteenth century romantics in my thoughts as I worry about work, family, and finances? And how do I hold onto perseverance when the cherished event, whatever it might be, continues to be delayed?

Hope deferred makes the soul sick.

Yesterday, I watched Elizabeth Gilbert's TED Talk, "Your elusive creative genius".

She talked about just keeping at it, even when inspiration, her elusive creative genius, did not help carry the load. Yet in the daily grind, the just keeping at it, the repetition, there remains the opportunity for the transcendence, for the transformation to come. My mind wanders to the beginning of Samuel Beckett's Endgame:

Finished, it's finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished.
Grain upon grain, one by one, and one day, suddenly, there's a heap, a little heap, the impossible heap.

When does the pile of grains become a heap? When does one achieve the creative tipping point? When do the blog posts amount to something, some magnum opus?

So, I continue to write my blog posts, to explore ideas, to share, in hopes that the repetition will lead to the impossible heap, the transcendent transformation.