How dare I not say anything about the recent inauguration?!
The holiday season and the month surrounding it have recently flown by, and everyone and their mother was in town at one point or another in that time period. All these visitors kept me rather busy. Unfortunately, as I am not terribly diligent in writing down my adventures, this time period is mostly old news by now. Christmas was huge and family-tastic (I saw an uncle I haven't seen in 2ish years) and everything Thanksgiving should have been. Attending Damo's Annual Friends-and-Familygasm Holiday Extravaganza the weekend after was excellent, as it featured good people I hardly ever see. I was very happy in all of my interactions with the City of Pittsburgh (tm), as they all decided to come to New York for New Year's. New Year's Eve itself was my usual in a different place. Thanks to everyone I got to spend any birthday time with, as well . . . I've been warned that 25 is the year to start truly feeling old, but if I can manage it, I would like to be someone who doesn't worry too much about age even upon my 30th birthday. Finally, Nina was in town for a whole month and I hung out with her exactly 1.5 times . . . for which I am sorry. As for more recent developments . . .
Last week I attended the Moth, which is what they call a "storyslam". Close to a hundred people packed into The Housing Works (I haven't been there since the Age of Nina, by the way . . . very nostalgic), and a number of these people wrote their names down for entry into a hat. The MC drew 10 of these names at random over the course of the evening, and anyone so selected got on stage to tell a 5-minutes short story on a given theme (which, this time around, was "home"). Meanwhile, others in the audience formed 3 teams of judges, who scored each story directly after hearing it on a scale from 0.0 to 10.0. A number of good storytellers frequent these events, apparently . . . and from what I saw, some good actors, too. Suffice it to say, I am surprised I hadn't heard about this event before (thank you, Julia) and will proceed to drag shittons of friends to future instances of the Moth when convenient/feasible.
I have spent an embarrassing amount of this past weekend drinking, but it was sort of a sidebar (in my mind) to getting to know a number of new and interesting people. Friday night featured a birthday party in which I finally had a chance to socialize with the ever-growing CDNY group . . . plenty of people there I am glad to have met. More significantly to me however, was last night. Keely's in town, so a group of us (myself, Keely, Greller, Lex, Cohen, her friend David) spent the night drinking and presumably celebrating a successful audition for a grad voice program. I bring last night up in this context because given my past opportunities to interact with Keely, last night felt very similar to getting to know a new person. It's genuinely one of my favorite experiences. After my usual experience of (when it comes to Keely) being surrounded by all these people with so much history with her, this made me feel honored. For my next trick, I will try to do a better job of getting to know people beyond some initial breakthrough interaction.
I recently mustered up the courage to send someone a message on OkCupid . . . I figured perhaps I might try using the site for its intended purpose for once. As expected, I received no response . . . but I think I'm impressed enough that I even bothered to click "Send".
Speaking (vaguely) of things romantic, I am happy to report that a long era of bad emotional "habits"(?) seems to finally be going away, and perhaps I can keep any distress over people I can't have to a minimum. However, tonight I have recognized that I am gradually becoming an angrier person . . . which may or may not affect my long-term goal of being less . . . nice? I might very well become completely insufferable before I get angry enough to improve things . . . the race is on.
Maybe I should write more often in order to avoid cramming everything I want to say (and inevitably leaving some of it out) into one long entry.