Born Today?

The things you learned how to do well and then stopped doing do not disappear, but they change while they wait. A skill that once felt automatic now carries the weight of all the conversations you have had about why you stopped, all the reasons that seemed good enough at the time, all the explanations that became more complicated each time you gave them. What you remember as simple competence has become tangled with everything you have learned about yourself since you last used it. The year ahead asks you to pick up something you set down and discover what it has become in your absence. Not whether you can still do it, but what doing it again will mean now that you know more about what you were avoiding when you walked away from it in the first place.