A puzzle, a poem, the 3 of pentacles 🧩
Plus: my 🎵 24 for '24 playlist
Hi friends,
I’m not a puzzle person, but somehow I spent hours working on one over the holiday with Ben’s family, helping assemble a 500-piece photo of the Little Rock Old Mill in Arkansas. Puzzling is slow work — the beginning methodical, the end increasingly rewarding, the middle laborious. A metaphor for book writing and so many other things, too.
I am not great at solving puzzles. But you know who is? Ants.
A study just came out comparing the problem-solving abilities of ants and humans in a task that was essentially a puzzle, and ants did much better than us. They were able to use their emergent collective intelligence to perform more efficiently in larger groups, whereas humans increasingly failed as groups got larger. People struggled to communicate and got greedier to their own detriment. Their findings suggest that we are often damned by these complex human brains that we have; they make coordination and communication even harder. The study reminded me of a poem I once wrote with these lines:
Would you believe the stories someone tells you about your life? One thing I won’t believe is the bumper sticker in the parking lot of the Sprouts on Speedway It says, “Too many people, not enough nature” As though this person had never sang a song that must be sung Or flown away Or basked in the sun Or arisen to brew coffee like a hummingbird to nectar Or marched the ants along with a clipboard in its DNA
We can understand something powerful in our contrast with the ants, which is that by our nature we fare much better in tightly knit groups. This is an idea theorized by the Dunbar’s number:
“According to the theory, the tightest circle has just five people – loved ones, followed by successive layers of 15 (good friends), 50 (friends), 150 (meaningful contacts), 500 (acquaintances) and 1500 (people you can recognize). People migrate in and out of these layers, but the idea is that space has to be carved out for any new entrants.”
Holding too tightly to the numbers is less useful, but the value of honing in on close relationships is one I can appreciate. This was echoed in my year as well, which felt like a time of contracting, refining, clarifying, going smaller. This is our nature: to cyclically shed and to clarify. It made me smile then when I realized that it was also my 36th year, an autumn year for me. Here are a few themes that emerged for me:
Presence was my word of the year. I checked in with Ben to ask him how I did with my goal of phone screen distraction. He said he noticed progress, my attention divided much less when we are together. I’ll take it!
Focus was, however, still an issue for me in 2024. I set out to write a tiny book, and I did not, often distracting myself with busy work, cleaning and admin tasks, fretting and toiling away to distract myself from writing. This is an area I want to zoom in on for 2025, with a concrete plan of action and buckling down.
My health and physical strength was an area of growth for me. I checked off most of the Blue Band skills at my small group training gym — most recently the 12KG Turkish Get Up. I feel more energized throughout the day, and know I could walk into any gym now and move through a program without injury. In fact, the other day a trainer at a different place remarked on how well I was moving and asked where I trained. Lesson: there’s power in a program and investing in professional help.
Intuition came through for me as a quiet shedding. I was quietly drawn away from alcohol, finding myself turned off by the feeling of being drunk. This year I enjoyed multiple weddings, work events, vacations, family meals and a variety of otherwise alcohol-centric social hangs while sober. Coming from a lineage of alcoholics and having spent most of my twenties as a regular and often heavy drinker, this feels like my small way of breaking a harmful cycle (catch this throwback from Om Weekly circa 2019 for the wee beginnings.)
Prioritizing friendships was a highlight for my year. I was able to spend time with some of my closest long-time besties, enjoying weddings and hanging with their kiddos, too. 💕 I also made time for regular weekly friend hangs and monthly circles with a group of women who I met through the Ninth House as well as a small writing circle. In 2025, I want to keep leaning into my Writerly Witchy Auntie Era, please and thank you.
Relational healing was and is, as always, such a work in progress. This year, I took two immersions through my yoga studio on parts work, and I’m looking forward to exploring this more, particularly with loved ones.
Poetry helped me, again and again. Some of the brightest moments of the year were while reading and writing poems. I have a vision to learn more and share more of this, in a more structured way, next year. So, stay tuned for that. On that note, I’ve composed a poem below, my year in verse.
2024: A Year In Review As snow falls on the saguaros I glue the old phrase on canvas: “Write Like a Motherfucker.” Sobriety and sleep, protein and parts work, learning to lift heavy things, until it becomes second nature. The writing comes out of your body And I learn to honor mine. Between winter workdays, reading "Song of Myself" start-to-finish, framing a poem in an airplane window seat, Marble and Aravaipa Canyons with the one who makes me camp And I learn the only answer is beneath my moving pen. Spring helps shape clay in my hands, crescent shadows on sidewalks, my "enough" number. Under a midwest tornado, we celebrate love. Under a goldfinch nest, I rewire a part of me that's scared to. And I learn to not keep secrets about magical things. Summer carries us west, to a treehouse cabin by a river. The best times are with friends, I miss walking to my yoga studio, And I learn (again) what matters most. In the fall I practice Sanskrit, and re-write my perfect day, which starts with recording dreams, like the one where I climb a dirt wall, (hands filthy, but the view!) I learn that our screens are an illusion, and visions are cast through living, as we walk the streets of my once-fantasy town. And in a year of contraction and sifting, I learn how to pick up heavy things and when to set them down.
A Journaling Prompt
This morning, I led my final flow yoga practice of the year with a group of women who have come together to reflect, rest and welcome 2025 in community nestled among the bare trees of western Maryland. Before class, I pulled a card from
Tarot deck to share a message with us: The Three of Pentacles.
One interpretation of the Three of Pentacles is about collaboration and sharing of skills, all in the effort toward building a communal structure. In the card, they are building a cathedral but perhaps you are building something like a community garden, a pickleball team, a quilting group. After class, Catherine pulled the Six of Wands, which you might interpret as a card about confidence and natural talent. We offered a question to the group that I thought was a beautiful one and worthy of sharing here as well perhaps for your own reflection.
📝 What are some of the skills, qualities or offerings that I can share or with my community?
Playlist: My 24 for ‘24
It’s a tradition now and I’m never gonna break a tradition. Enjoy and happy new year!!
Lovely post, Kelly. Happy new year to you!