For Christmas this year, I'm giving myself two weeks away from the blog. It is well needed. The other day, my boss called my blog "dullsville," and, really, I had to agree with her.

When I get back, I hope to find the courage that I'm always looking for to write about what is actually going on in my life. Maybe 2009 is the year. In fact, I decided just now that it is my new year's resolution. I'm going to make 2009 the year.

I wish every one of my readers a happy Christmahanukwanzaakah. Many blessings for the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009.

A snail, forever
Stuck to a grey concrete wall,
Dried up, left mid-crawl.

One of my favorite things about my job is my window.

(My desk was decorated for my birthday in this picture, by the way--it doesn't always look like this.)

It is a west-facing window on the 29th floor of a 36-floor building in downtown Dallas. Just before I started my job, my boss convinced the big boss that natural light is absolutely essential for copyeditors to do their job properly, and he took immediate action to move the copyeditors to the one wall of windows in our office. And it really is true--I do need my window to do my job properly. But mostly because if it were taken away from me, my job satisfaction would plummet.

In the summer, the light coming in through the window in the afternoons bakes my feet.

In the winter, I watch the sunset every clear night. Sometimes it is outrageously beautiful. On those evenings I take a picture of it with my MacBook. It always surprises me how quickly the sun disappears under the horizon. There's just a slice of it, still illuminating the world, and then, not two seconds later, there's nothing. Just darkness, and the light of a thousand buildings, cars, and houses.

But today all I see is fog. And it's creeping me out a little.

Chad and I are trying something new in which we share with each other something we found beauty in each day. Yesterday, I told him that I found beauty in watching the fog wisp around outside my window and build up to such an extent that the light coming through my window reminded me of the bright light that occurs the morning after a snowstorm.

But it's been several days since I've seen the sun now, and I'm ready for it to come back. And when it does, it, too, will be a beautiful thing.

I am the girl sitting in the window of the Quiznos on Harwood at lunchtime, eating a cup of chili and reading Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction.

You should stop in and say hello.

Here's an embarrassing confession: I keep making these terrible videos of myself performing acoustic guitar covers of Feist's "Mushaboom" and Josh Rouse's "Sweetie." I put on makeup, brush my hair, get out the digital camera, find some sort of surface to place it on, tune my guitar, check the framing of the camera, press "play," and go for it.

Then I watch the videos, wince as I hear how terribly flat I am, and say to the dog, "I really wish I could sing." Or play the guitar, for that matter.

It may be the height of narcissism.

I sound as though I'm laboring over every note. And even if I sang the song flawlessly right before pressing "play" (which, honestly, is not likely), that camera staring at me with all the eyes of the people who may potentially view the video makes my voice shake.

I've had stage fright ever since I was very little. For some reason, however, I was always doing solos at my not-so-small Baptist church growing up. Christmas pageants, Summer Week of Choir performances, Children's Choir extravaganzas. My mother encouraged it, and all the congratulations I received after it was over usually made the experience worthwhile. Which is to say that my little girl ego swelled to its current unjust proportions regarding any sort of singing ability I (don't) have.

The most recent performance was for a Vespers service. I was probably fourteen or so, and I wanted to sing the first verse of "All Is Well" because I adored the song so much. However, I spilled Communion grape juice all over my dress just before I was to sing (damn those tiny, plastic individual-serving-of-Christ's-blood evangelical church cups). I had been sitting in the front row prepared to take the stage at my cue, but, in retrospect, a better preparation would've been to NOT TAKE COMMUNION. I suppose that sort of thing couldn't've been predicted, though. I ran to the bathroom and tried to clean myself up as best I could, then I got to the stage just as the song was starting, and, out of breath and completely mortified, I struggled through.

I haven't performed publicly since.

But the drive is still somewhere inside of me. My shaking voice isn't so charming anymore now that I'm a grown-up and all, and my vocal chords feel underdeveloped. I can carry a tune (barely) but not much else. But I love music, and even if I never sing for anyone ever again, I will keep singing for myself. And I'll keep making those videos in the meantime in the vain hope that my voice manages to magically iron itself out.