this is me trying (softer)

we don't have to try hard or try alone.

New year, same us! Right? It’s bizarre to expect people to emerge on the other side of a random ball drop on an arbitrary calendar day as anything other than the blanket-burrowing, cheese-stuffed souls we were in late December. Read the room, January.

And alas, we do our new year’s rituals. We put on pants, sometimes even with waistbands in them. We show up for ourselves, for our people, for the work that is ours to do in the world. Witnessing the earnest effort we humans put into daily living and into caring for one another, even when things are difficult, absolutely melts me. Watching the way people are helping each other during the L.A. fires right now softens my broken heart into a puddle. As my favorite poet,

Andrea Gibson

, has said: “I know most people try hard to do good and find out too late they should have tried softer.”