In June of 1985, I had the opportunity to hear Dr. Paul Brand give a commencement address on the occasion of the Medical School graduation at the University of California, Davis.

It was an outdoor event, and by the time we arrived, the only available seating was on the lawn.

I was, at the time, a young mother with two small children and bad grass allergies. The children have since grown, but the allergies have remained, and so has my memory of Dr. Brand’s speech.

Two things in particular have stuck with me, one of which is pertinent to the new year. One had to do with our assumptions and how they can impede our understanding of the truth, but the topic he covered that applies to the new year was this:

Dr. Brand pointed out that the facts he learned in medical school were not the same facts that the graduating class of medical doctors had learned. He addressed the graduates directly and told them that he had had to choose which things to take forward with him in life, and that these soon-to-be-doctors would need to do the same.

Now, as 2011 begins to unfold, I am thinking about the things I want to take forward.

With that in mind, the first crochet task I tackled today was to finish the dodecahedron that coordinates with my 2011 Moleskine calendar. This required that I stuff the shape with polyfil and attach the last pentagon. In the process, the dodecahedron took on a more spherical form, but I am still pleased as it has what I think of as a contemplative joy:

In this next pose, it is easy to see how good the dodecahedron and the calendar will look on my desk:

These next two views show how well the dodecahedron and calendar coordinate with and complement one another:

So, with Dr. Brand’s advice in mind, I have two resolutions for this year as they pertain to crochet.

One is to finish one old project for every new one I start.

The other is to organize my crochet space so that the time I have used to find the eyes/yarn/hook/book that I need for a project can instead be used to work on projects themselves.

This will require that I sort through the things that I do have and make decisions about what stays and what goes. It will force me to order my priorities, and decide which things I will be bringing forward, and which things will need to be left behind

I know the calendar won’t fix everything; it is, after all, a calendar. It cannot make decisions. Unlike me, it has no particular color preference. But it is a tool I can use to keep a record of how I spend my time, and from that, I can learn, in a very real sense, how I am spending my time, and then decide if that is the investment I want to make.