A Second New Year's
Thoughts after Completing My Second Master's Degree
I am having a second New Year’s Day. I have been pulled back to a few expressions since I last wrote to you.
It is here:
The first, I think of the speaker in this poem, taking a moment to consider life and all that she is still able to do as the threshold closes and opens on New Year’s Day.
I count, this first day of another year, what remains.
I have a mountain, a kitchen, two hands.
Can admire with two eyes the mountain,
actual, recalcitrant, shuffling its pebbles, sheltering foxes and beetles.
It goes on. And maybe it is familiar; I shared this with you during a winter break once. This one.
The second, I think of the opening line in this poem I found in the anthology I’ve been enjoying.
You don’t have to be awake | to feel the night change
“New Year’s Day” by Elmaz Abi-Nader
Another New Year’s Moment
My heart is pulled to these words because I have arrived at and surpassed a threshold in my own little life. I graduated. I walked on Monday, May 18th, 2026, and commemorated the completion of a second master’s degree. Three years of working full-time, studying part-time, and attempts at everything else I could manage have accumulated to this finale. The saga closes.
In-action and States of Rest
As it turned out, I completed the coursework in the middle of April. I have had an early start on resting and reminiscing on the moment. At the beginning of this path, the day before my first semester I stood outside the building imagining all the things I could think of that might happen or change during the next several years. After I received word my coursework was complete, I did the same walk and the same reflection.
These are the photos I took at each moment, the bookends.
2023
2026
I have been looking forward to this moment for a long time. I remember a specific lament at the beginning, a fear. I was fearful for my walking, that I would lose track of myself and stop walking slowly. I regain my slowness. I take my pace again. I am proud for this leap.
Next-Return
Picking up near where I left off, my first book read after finishing was another Byung-Chul Han book, Vita Contemplativa. I read a grip of his books as this master’s approached and tried to detail my thoughts and experiences here: Saving Beauty, The Scent of Time, The Disappearance of Rituals, and The Burnout Society.
Here, I have just completed another. Like the others, there are some great ideas and quotes I walked away with; however, this is the best:
And a work, the result of activity, is complete only when it offers itself up to our vision
I found myself (trying to) repeat this to others. Here is the version that came out of me:
A work of art is incomplete until it is regarded
So my focus now is to give myself space to regard this moment: the work, the craft, and the art of what three years of focus, growth, and intensity can bring.
I want to share these two reflections with you now:
We are always having a human experience. We all must hold and pass through moments of joy and grief. Being a part of an organization does not change that, though it changes how those manifest in the workplace or world.
In some kind of circle, I have returned to what I focused on in my first masters, my MA in English: what does it mean to experience being alive right now?
Thus it is here where I land.
More soon,
Trevor
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Bien hecho