I have no problem deleting files, texts, emails, blog posts, tweets… anything.

I am a confident, swift, positively gleeful deleter if I don’t feel the need to keep something around, either because it has served its purpose… or failed to serve one in the first place.

Sometimes I delete things too soon, which requires reproducing them — but they’re usually better the second time, even if I drive myself insane in the process. If I have to request them from someone else, however, I end up feeling like the kind of heedless, irritating person who throws out a birthday card with cash still tucked inside.

Sometimes I delete out of some combination of thoughtfulness and cowardice because of the reaction something fosters in others (or might foster in others — I don’t hedge my bets), or I delete because I am confident I shouldn’t have sent whatever into the ether in the first place.

I’d like to say my tendency to delete has kept me out of hot water… but while you can delete things, you can’t actually un-say them.

I’d like to believe all this deleting uncomplicates my life… but I just fill in more where I delete, and complication returns via a sort of queasy, inevitable osmosis.

But I think I delete because I like tiny control.

I like to wrest order from disorder in temporary, yet giddy ways… though I don’t recognize them as that at the time.

It isn’t lost on me that when things seem truly crucial — work email, client email, pictures of family and friends on my phone/camera/laptop, texts full of loving, ridiculously gushy words from my gift of a new husband — my delete-happy ways fall by the proverbial wayside.

And I can’t ignore the reality that I most often delete to alleviate discomfort or self-disdain: when I say something badly or offend someone without thinking (or with thought, but just stupid ones); when I blather on and don’t recognize it in time; when I recognize the need for an edit after the fact; when I am temporarily uncomfortable in my own skin and figure that tapping out words or images or ideas will give me a bit more room to breathe.

It’s chicken.

I mean, sometimes it’s organized and smart and together. But it can definitely be chicken.

I don’t like to be an ass, as much as I may show tremendous facility for it. So I try and clean things up the same sort of vigor with which I’d attack a client paragraph with my virtual red pen: let’s get life down to the best of what it should have been, and hope that I don’t yammer on quite so much the next time.

But I will.

And something tells me I need to live with that discomfort a little more than I’m willing to now, even if I want to run up a tree like a crazy squirrel, dodging the feral cat of my own lameness.

(See? That metaphor was terrible, and I didn’t even get rid of it.)

Because it radiates out into the rest of my life, this delete-happy way of approaching the world. Uncomfortable conversations don’t get… conversed. Stupid mistakes don’t get learned from because I don’t choose to truly walk through how I got there. I don’t like revisiting failures, even though I am a past-master at self-deprecation. But I only think about it if I can make fun of it.

And ask, if you dare, my domestic co-pilot how much I love staring into a Google spreadsheet and calculating costs down to the dollar to set our family budget. You’ll learn that I don’t really want to know just how much I overspent on that really lovely block of Parmesan for really lovely Carbonara and also? I would like to not know AND buy it again.

I delete what I should learn from. I delete what is worth looking in the eye. I even delete what I could accept about myself, instead of feeling like I dodged a bullet by not having to look in the mirror. I delete before I figure out it’s not so bad, or that there might be a solution… other than obliteration.

Does it really go away, anyway?

I’ve become this for what seemed like the right reasons, but perhaps it’s time to be a little less of it for the right reasons.

Deleting my deleting.

And dealing.

I am well acquainted with all things “fine.”

Fine hair? Yep, I have it. It frizzes out like cotton candy in humidity… and melts just as quickly, too.

Fine jewelry? Yep, I love it. Not that I have much of it, but I am sufficiently enamored of it to drool over auction catalogs full of baubles and sparklers (without actually going to the auction, naturally.)

Fines herbes? Yep, they are a good thing. Tarragon is a mainstay in my kitchen, although I always think people in cooking shows are saying “gerbil”, not “chervil.” “Just combine parsley, chives, tarragon, and gerbil…”

Fines? Yep, from the library, but not for many years. And not because I’ve fixed my ways — I just buy the books now so I can do the financial bloodletting up front.

Finite? I am. It’s true. Though truly it may seem like I go on and on verbally and textually without limits or stops a good portion of the time, my arms are VERY finite. So finite that they don’t reach the top shelf, requiring me to get my infinitely armed stepson to get things down for me.

But.

I’ve noticed lately that I’m using “fine” or “okay” to answer how I am, rather than “great!” or “good!” I’m not doing it in that PLEASE ASK ME HOW I AM kind of way, because I don’t really have a ton of interest in talking about it — though I’m writing a blog post about it right now, so that’s crap, clearly.

No, I’m saying it without realizing I’m saying it, but it’s honest, and now I’m trying to figure out where my “great!” and “good!” went.

If I look at my life objectively, I would say it’s pretty great. I have a snazzy husband, awesome kids hanging out, a fantastic family on this coast and another (or two!), terrific friends, a bunch more space in a bunch better neighborhood home-wise, and a job that challenges me. I experience obstacles like anyone else, but in the balance, I am safe, healthy, and loved by the folks who are “required” to feel that way (no one is, but you know what I mean.)

But I started to think last night about how little time I’d spent acknowledging the stress of the huge changes I’ve seen in my life over the last couple of years.

Sure, I’ve written about it from time to time, but I tend to want to (and so I do!) tie up the endings of those posts (and my feelings!) with a nice bow — partly because that’s the way I am and have always been, and partly because I don’t want anyone to fuss about me from a thousand miles away or from a sofa cushion away. I don’t want anyone to worry that I’m going to sit down in the middle of making dinner some night and cry into my bunch of chervil-gerbil. I don’t want to be ungrateful or melodramatic, because those things tend to get on my nerves in myself and others.

Seriously. People go to sleep at night listening to gunfire. I get a snorer and the dishwasher (I love falling asleep to the dishwasher. HELLO OCD!)

That said, if I take a look at the Holmes and Rahe stress scale, my score is 625 for the last 3 years of my life. BAM! I don’t even know how valid the whole thing is, but someone mentioned it once, so I looked myself up, and ended up a bit boggle-eyed at just how many changes I’d experienced. The lowest score I could calculate per year was 410, so even if I didn’t aggregate my life events, I’d still be stacking them up every 365 days or so.

Not all of the stuff on that list is BAD, mind you — in fact, much of it is AWESOME and THINGS I WANTED TO DO. But it was interesting to think about the fact that even positive change can be stressful and “impactful.” (I just used that NON-WORD to add some additional stress to my life.)

Interesting to think of how often I ignore the negative or challenging changes, as though they were eliminated by some sort of Pollyanna Venn diagram.

While much around me is both great and good, and while the vast majority of the time, I am smiling (unless I’m making my typing face, which makes me look alternately comatose or crazed), I have to own it:

I’m really, really tired. Fairly often. Sometimes to the point of frustration. I unleashed a good deal of that on my husband last night, and likely deserved soap in my mouth or a kick in the ass for it.

I’m a bit overwhelmed, too (or a lot, depending on the day.) I’m also nervous, pensive, concerned, and other words that could occur in a character description for myself, were I on Broadway. This last holiday season made me aware of it, somehow, even as I was gazing contentedly at our sparkly tree. Something was a bit off, and it wasn’t just the bendy trunk on our Frazier fir.

A LOT has changed. A LOT.

There is nothing about my life that is similar to what it was two years or three years ago (save for my tendency to buy a lot of different salts and trip on air.) I have had to adjust everything from my expectations to my pantry contents to accommodate a new life. That’s kind of a big deal. It’s fine, but a weird kind of fine at times that is a bit hard for me.

And it’s been hard for people in my life, too, my “fine”-ishness. My subtle avoidance of “whoa.”

I know Gradon is going to poke me in the eye the next time I make fun of him for being forgetful or mentioning a cool car we just passed (he does this like a Detroit-bred or Autobahn-tested savant), because that seems to be my charming way of letting off a bit of steam, or shifting the focus off my own behavior.

I know my parents wish I’d call more, along with many of my West coast AND East coast friends, who are a little bit over my “I’m sorry!” reply to complaints about my lack of availability or intentionality, along with professions about my commute or obligations or whatever else. Add on the guilt for that, and you’ve got a recipe for stupid (spending the time you should spend with people feeling badly that you’re not spending that time with people.) And because I know I’m not “getting it right”, I tend to stress that my relationships are not as unconditional as I seem to assume they are — though I never really assume they are. I just act like it. I know how tenuous new friendships can be, and what my established relationships deserve: more.

I know I forget details and let things slide that I should make a priority, partly because I’m overwhelmed, and partly because what lurks behind those details is the spectre of getting something big very, very wrong. Performance anxiety isn’t my thing on a stage (I love a microphone!) Just in planning important things.

I know I spend a lot of time doing things I think will de-stress me (cooking!) without spending time on things that might actually de-stress me (ordering in pizza with my husband and laughing at stupid television, or making something that, say, doesn’t take 30 ingredients and 4 hours.)

I know all my frazzle has made me things I don’t wish to be somewhat often, including inefficient, ungrateful, snarky, and ignorant.

Anyway, I’m not sure where all of these thoughts need to end up or how I’ll process them properly, though I know I needed to put them down somewhere where I’d have to acknowledge they were true.

Right now, I’m fine. Which is better and luckier than most, I am CERTAIN (see what I did there?)

But not as good as I could be, given the resources and opportunities and people I have in my rapidly evolving life. Which is something to think about.

And then do something about. Though I don’t know what. I just know it’s time.

Because you can only blame the roller coaster for making you dizzy for so long before it’s time to shut up and eat a hot dog.

If you would have told me, even four years ago, that I would be spending New Year’s Eve in a new home in a new neighborhood in Boston, MA, with my new husband and his 13- and 16-year-olds playing video games on multiple devices just feet away from where I type now, I would have given you a bit of a raised eyebrow.

And by “bit”, I mean that I would have rolled my eyes and asked if you got a good deal on the crack you were smoking.

I mean, come on.

Some of it sounds like what I had in mind, sure.

Husband? Yep, I always intended to have one of those.

Kids? Yep, I always intended to have them.

A home? Sure, you need somewhere to put all those people, right?

But the way it all actually happened continues to be a surprise, even after weeks and months of life together. Really. It’s easy to get used to the new… until I open my eyes in the middle of the night and hear someone snoring just inches away (and a room or two away), and watch the shadows dancing across our bedroom wall, created by the moon shining through our backyard trees.

My backyard? My trees? My wall? My snoring mate (and guys)?

Wow.

I like that — I don’t want to get used to it quite yet.

I want to be surprised by joy and thankfulness every day for as long as I can sustain it.

Is it perfect? No. I’m not sure what perfect would look like, but it sounds awfully dull.

Is it trouble-free? No. And I never stood a chance of a life like that, flawed as I am.

Is it predictable? In some ways, yest, and in other ways, not a chance. You know… just like life.

Is it all ironed-out? Not a chance. We’ve still got more things to figure out in the months ahead.

But I am so thrilled it’s what I have.

As we celebrate the beginning of a new year, I find myself thinking what I always think on this occasion: New Year’s Eve is an over-hyped, faux-holiday that leads to anxiety about “doing something”, painfully high heels, horribly expensive dinner reservations, hours of awkward footage from Times Square of the latest Ryan-Seacrestian-hoster-of-things, and big expectations that no evening can match.

Forget it.

I’m happy to stay at home with my guys, and welcome the calendar change with Chinese takeout and junk food and video games and laughing. Which is pretty much the same stuff we do every other Saturday night, too.

I’m so thankful.

Happy New Year, and love to all.