Filing This Year Away
I got too used to the notion that I could surmise one entire year with a couple of words describing generally one emotion: 2012 was a pretty good year. 2011 was a great one. 2010 was optimistic. So on. To say that 2013 was any one thing would be about as vapid as a "oh I'm fine" response to the how are you? question when I am clearly not.
I guess I could go with a neutral word. Varied. 2013 was varied. 2013 was very, very varied. Lots of varying. Lots of variance. Lots of lots.
Saw eight concerts, including one of my favorites ever (Iron & Wine) and one where I got hit with a microphone cord (A Silent Film). Went on a couple of dates. Nothing ever went too far, but it's those little steps.
From a moving average perspective, ending up the year 33 pounds lighter than where it began. I've moved to start rewarding myself with smaller clothes. It starts this positive feedback loop that is quite electrifying.
Purchased one new camera and two new lenses for the low low price of quite a few dollars. Subsequently pressed the shutter 6,095 times. 1,342 of them made it to the internet. The ratio of posted photo to total camera cost is at least below $1 each, so I'm getting some use out of this hobby of mine.
I watched a thunderstorm go by from the observation deck of the Sears Tower, climbed a larger-than-it-looked sand dune on the Lake Michigan shore, and had some breakfast coffee in the French Quarter.
Built a new desktop. I have no metrics like my camera to try and justify it but guys, guys. It's shiny.
If I could just stop here it would be a wonderfully positive year.
I saw my mother one day in the calendar year 2013. She was in a casket. It was March 22nd. I was going to appear for a surprise visit the weekend of Easter: March 30th and 31st. My plans were too late. I talked to her a couple of times, but none since January. The conversations were short. Then she was tired. Then there was a stroke. Then the conversations had one active participant. Then my phone rang early in the afternoon on March 19th.
I wrote a eulogy that week. Little did I know it would be the beginning of the end of me having a desire to write anything with any sort of regularity. I was told it went well. I can see me reading it in my head, but I can't process the feelings. A handful of friends sat at the back of a room filled with a great deal of family and listened to me read: the twenty-nine year old child trying to grasp the gift of life, good fortune, and loss. Quaint.
A lot of people saw me cry that week. A whole lot. Received quite a few hugs, too.
Wound up thinking about death a whole lot this year. Way more than anyone would like to, probably way more than anyone my age should. I'm generally annoyed that I will not live forever. There's so many places to go, pictures to take, and books to read between now and the heat death of the universe - I'm miffed that I'll only get to experience a small fraction of that.
My family grew by three this year: one new great niece from my oldest niece, the other two long lost sisters from the culmination of a series of plot twists that could easily carry a mid-budgeted indie film at the very least. In a year with a good deal of loss it's nice to know there is still upside.
More optimistic still, "my side of the family" finds itself communicating with "the other side of the family", a reunion some twelve years in the making since the death of my grandmother.
The year ended with a lot of hope and a lot of reassurance. Nothing amazing and new happened, but instead a continuous set of reminders that there's friends and family here for me, quite a lot of them. Their support unspoken in common times but on full display at the darkest times, I look at being invited to someone else's Thanksgiving dinner in this city a distance from where I came from, to the well wishes sent my way for my birthday, Christmas, condolences and otherwise, the in-passing "how are you?" text that more than anything else reminds me someone cares a bit... it all leaves me appreciative in ways I can't really express aside from trying to be as good of a friend as I can be right back.
I used to dislike family gatherings as any teenager or young adult might. They're just so boring and usually filled with drama, you know? My attitude changed: life is too short to be annoyed by people, even more so when those people are family. Simplistic as it is, that's the long and short of it.
I end this year feeling emotionally exhausted and spent from extremes good and bad. I don't recall a time with such heights and depths one right after the next and I would be fully okay with not experiencing another like this for at least a little while. We don't get to make such choices of course but it's a nice hope.
As for me and the year to come? I have no wild plans or any great new things to do. I just want to keep going. At work, in my hobbies, and so on. No master plans or overriding goals to target. Just keep going. I have an idea in my mind of what I'd like to do and who'd I like to be, and I plan on working toward that and just that.
I felt sorry that my mother never got to see the world much beyond southeastern Michigan, so I'm going to try and travel more. I feel sorry that my father spent most of his adult life at a factory working 12 hours a day, seven days a week, because he thought he would wake up one morning at the age of 65 and suddenly have an active retirement full of friendships he never spent time cultivating. So I'm going to try to be social. That's it. That's 2014, 2015, and all the other 20's that I'll have the privileges of seeing: see things, meet people, make memories. It won't be in the Hollywood sense of fireworks flashing over a retreating ocean sunset with wispy pop music humming along in the background but I'll like it, whatever it winds up being.
I can't thank everyone enough who has been kind to me. I can't with that previous sentence, this one, or a whole bunch of as-yet unwritten ones after it. I can't with all the hugs and handshakes and "thank yous" I have given and more that I still owe. This year could have been worse emotionally - much, much worse. And it wasn't. Because I couldn't sink that far for that long before someone else would be along to distract me, give me something to do, remind me even in a minor and insignificant way that I'm still alive so hey let's just live for the next couple of hours alright? Patch enough of those together and you'll get through.
...and that's the book on this year. May there still be many more to come.
I guess I could go with a neutral word. Varied. 2013 was varied. 2013 was very, very varied. Lots of varying. Lots of variance. Lots of lots.
Saw eight concerts, including one of my favorites ever (Iron & Wine) and one where I got hit with a microphone cord (A Silent Film). Went on a couple of dates. Nothing ever went too far, but it's those little steps.
From a moving average perspective, ending up the year 33 pounds lighter than where it began. I've moved to start rewarding myself with smaller clothes. It starts this positive feedback loop that is quite electrifying.
Purchased one new camera and two new lenses for the low low price of quite a few dollars. Subsequently pressed the shutter 6,095 times. 1,342 of them made it to the internet. The ratio of posted photo to total camera cost is at least below $1 each, so I'm getting some use out of this hobby of mine.
I watched a thunderstorm go by from the observation deck of the Sears Tower, climbed a larger-than-it-looked sand dune on the Lake Michigan shore, and had some breakfast coffee in the French Quarter.
Built a new desktop. I have no metrics like my camera to try and justify it but guys, guys. It's shiny.
If I could just stop here it would be a wonderfully positive year.
I saw my mother one day in the calendar year 2013. She was in a casket. It was March 22nd. I was going to appear for a surprise visit the weekend of Easter: March 30th and 31st. My plans were too late. I talked to her a couple of times, but none since January. The conversations were short. Then she was tired. Then there was a stroke. Then the conversations had one active participant. Then my phone rang early in the afternoon on March 19th.
I wrote a eulogy that week. Little did I know it would be the beginning of the end of me having a desire to write anything with any sort of regularity. I was told it went well. I can see me reading it in my head, but I can't process the feelings. A handful of friends sat at the back of a room filled with a great deal of family and listened to me read: the twenty-nine year old child trying to grasp the gift of life, good fortune, and loss. Quaint.
A lot of people saw me cry that week. A whole lot. Received quite a few hugs, too.
Wound up thinking about death a whole lot this year. Way more than anyone would like to, probably way more than anyone my age should. I'm generally annoyed that I will not live forever. There's so many places to go, pictures to take, and books to read between now and the heat death of the universe - I'm miffed that I'll only get to experience a small fraction of that.
My family grew by three this year: one new great niece from my oldest niece, the other two long lost sisters from the culmination of a series of plot twists that could easily carry a mid-budgeted indie film at the very least. In a year with a good deal of loss it's nice to know there is still upside.
More optimistic still, "my side of the family" finds itself communicating with "the other side of the family", a reunion some twelve years in the making since the death of my grandmother.
The year ended with a lot of hope and a lot of reassurance. Nothing amazing and new happened, but instead a continuous set of reminders that there's friends and family here for me, quite a lot of them. Their support unspoken in common times but on full display at the darkest times, I look at being invited to someone else's Thanksgiving dinner in this city a distance from where I came from, to the well wishes sent my way for my birthday, Christmas, condolences and otherwise, the in-passing "how are you?" text that more than anything else reminds me someone cares a bit... it all leaves me appreciative in ways I can't really express aside from trying to be as good of a friend as I can be right back.
I used to dislike family gatherings as any teenager or young adult might. They're just so boring and usually filled with drama, you know? My attitude changed: life is too short to be annoyed by people, even more so when those people are family. Simplistic as it is, that's the long and short of it.
I end this year feeling emotionally exhausted and spent from extremes good and bad. I don't recall a time with such heights and depths one right after the next and I would be fully okay with not experiencing another like this for at least a little while. We don't get to make such choices of course but it's a nice hope.
As for me and the year to come? I have no wild plans or any great new things to do. I just want to keep going. At work, in my hobbies, and so on. No master plans or overriding goals to target. Just keep going. I have an idea in my mind of what I'd like to do and who'd I like to be, and I plan on working toward that and just that.
I felt sorry that my mother never got to see the world much beyond southeastern Michigan, so I'm going to try and travel more. I feel sorry that my father spent most of his adult life at a factory working 12 hours a day, seven days a week, because he thought he would wake up one morning at the age of 65 and suddenly have an active retirement full of friendships he never spent time cultivating. So I'm going to try to be social. That's it. That's 2014, 2015, and all the other 20's that I'll have the privileges of seeing: see things, meet people, make memories. It won't be in the Hollywood sense of fireworks flashing over a retreating ocean sunset with wispy pop music humming along in the background but I'll like it, whatever it winds up being.
I can't thank everyone enough who has been kind to me. I can't with that previous sentence, this one, or a whole bunch of as-yet unwritten ones after it. I can't with all the hugs and handshakes and "thank yous" I have given and more that I still owe. This year could have been worse emotionally - much, much worse. And it wasn't. Because I couldn't sink that far for that long before someone else would be along to distract me, give me something to do, remind me even in a minor and insignificant way that I'm still alive so hey let's just live for the next couple of hours alright? Patch enough of those together and you'll get through.
...and that's the book on this year. May there still be many more to come.