2 posts tagged “2008”
Picked this up from Writebrained.
1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before?
-went on a trip with my sister
-paid my own medical bills/set up my own cellphone account
-questioned the belief that I'm untouchable
-Went kayaking!
-Made plans and stuck to them.
-Took a cycling class.
-Walked a half-marathon
-Felt comfortable outside my comfort zone
-Yelled at my mom
-Went to a concert
-Played a console video game online
-Filled up a book with illustrations
-Took a semester off school
-Facebook (meh)
-Shoveled snow (off our roof, no less)
-Interacted with a shopping cart I took a picture of.
-Ate (sampled, really) tongue, shrimp and a few other food I'd rather not try again.
-Fed a cow
-Been on a subway
-Been seriously and completely lost
-Saw the Atlantic ocean (sort of. what you could see from inside a bay anyway)
-Gotten drive-thru fast food by myself.
-yoga
-held a few hours old baby
2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Maybe? I wrote them down but I don't want to check. I'm over it if I didn't.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Nik and Beth had babies! Babies!!!
4. Did anyone close to you die?
No, thankfully.
5. What countries did you visit?
The..um...United States?
6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?
The belief that everything will be ok.
7. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
July 4th, when Kenna went to California to see family and was instead diagnosed with cancer.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Becoming more self-reliant.
9. What was your biggest failure?
Failing to be strong in the face of tragedy and difficulty.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Now that I think about it, I don't think I did...
11. What was the best thing you bought?
Probably my camera. No, probably the Woot Lights.
12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Nik. She had a
baby during the worst time you could have a baby. And my mom for
helping everyone out even though she could have used some herself.
13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Library management. Lost all respect for them.
14. Where did most of your money go?
I haven't organized my Mint.com account to detail everything I bought, but a good amount went to picture frames...
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
If it was at a better time and I was in a better mood it would have been the trip to Massachusetts.
16. What song will always remind you of 2008?
Chaos-Mute
Math. And after reading my sister's list I'll also add Over the Rainbow
and the cat rendition of The Broken Road by Nate and myself.
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder?
sadder
b) thinner or fatter?
fatter
c) richer or poorer?
poorer (yeesh. great way to start the year)
18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Working out, spending time with friends
19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
I'm going to go with Writebrained and say "moping".
20. How did you spend Christmas?
Doing nothing at all, and that's how I like it.
21. Did you fall in love in 2008?
I don't pretend to know what love is.
22. What was your favorite TV program?
Chuck, Pushing
Daisies, How I Met Your Mother and Psych. And Burn Notice. Aaaand I
think that's it. Oh Big Bang Theory. Monk was good this year too,
also....
23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
I hate your mom.
24. What was the best book you read?
All the Twilight
books. MUAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA. But seriously, it's hard to remember all the
good ones I read. Probably the Dumas Club or Illustrating Childrens
Books
25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Mute Math and Kenna (um, a different Kenna than the one with cancer)
26. What did you want and get?
My camera, and the best food I ever had in Massachusetts.
27. What did you want and not get?
An XBox 360. Only thing on my Christmas list too.
28. What was your favorite film of this year?
I thought this was going to be very hard. Then I remembered Wall-E.
29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Had a rock band party at Marcie's house with AJ, Autumn, Jennifer and my sister. 23.
30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Graduating college.
31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?
Started off good with the momentum built in 07, then it gradually became apathetic again near the end.
32. What kept you sane?
Nothing.
33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I don't.
34. What political issue stirred you the most?
Mostly the immaturity of democrats and republicans treating the election like a sporting event.
35. Who did you miss?
Uh, I dunno. Eric? He left last year and comes back next year. But really, I miss Nate the most. (And by Nate I mean Bethany)
36. Who was the best new person you met?
Autumn! And not..you know...because she was the only new person I met.
37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008.
You can't wait for life to turn out ok.
"I kissed a girl. And I liked it".
Ok not really.
If I was still in a bad mood it would probably be from from Ok Go's 'The House Wins'
"If evil were a lesser breed than justice all these years
The righteous would have freed the world of sin
The house wins, oh, the house always wins."
But since I'm a little more hopeful than that, let's go with Ingrid Michaelson and Be Ok
"Open me up and you will see
I'm a gallery of broken hearts
I'm beyond repair, let me be
And give me back my broken parts"
The following was written from one-ish to three in the morning. Or something. I was really tired. Just so you know.
Here we go.
For most people, New Year's Eve is a time to look back at what they did for the last 364 days. They think about the trips to see family. Concerts they saw, games they went to and what they thought was the best movie of the year. They'll think about the friends they met and the love they lost. It's a "In 2008 I -enter what you did-" form. And I can do that, but there is more to say before I do.
The year started out like all the other 22 of my life. I had past regrets to dwell on and failed hopes to forget. I made my plans, thought about what I wanted and what I should do. I even told myself I'd get in shape. I made a few small steps to meet my goals, content because it was more than I had ever bothered to do before. Any progress was good progress.
In a way I didn't do much of anything in 2008. I kept the same job, didn't meet any new friends, and the good progress that was any was slow indeed. It was good enough though. I would get my license eventually, I could graduate school anytime and the monthly game nights with coworkers was more action than I had ever gotten in my entire life. I even went to Mt. Charleston with Caprice. That's like taking an impromptu trip to Europe for a guy that doesn't do much besides walk to work.
And then Mae left the library. That was tough, but change isn't always a bad thing. Right? Right. Then things really started changing.
Kenna got cancer. That's not something you can just put off or ignore. I obviously didn't take it very well. Nobody did. How could anybody?
Priorities changed then. It was hard to decide whether my goals were more important than ever or meaningless. I was leaning towards the latter before I hit what might be the lowest point of my life. But that's a story for another time. Point is, I had to decide if I wanted to be pissed off at the world or grow up and try to make it better.
I went with pissed off for a while.
And it's not just Kenna. I've got plenty to be angry about. The library management making a difficult time as difficult as it could be, my school abandoning my degree and leaving me to fend for myself. Our Place closing. Trick is, it's hard to live your life doing nothing. You have to come out to eat sometime.
I remember as a kid I would get so upset over the stupidest things. I'd barricade myself in my room and dwell on how horrible I had it, knowing that life would never get better. But it did. After a few hours or so I'd run out of tears and...well I'd get bored. Eventually I'd sneak out and keep to myself, but when your house isn't very big it's hard to find alone time and I'd be forced to interact with everyone else. By the next day it would be over.
This isn't quite the same thing. Not quite, but close. Because I don't believe that there's a balance between good and evil in the world. Good things happen. Bad things happen. There isn't any amount of good that can make up for what Kenna is going through. But good things happen anyway.
I got to hang out with Nate and Bethany, something I'll never forget. I rode a bus for the first (and probably last time). I haven't kept up with it but I made my first real dinner. I got stuck with jury duty but got out of it. And the time I had to spend waiting to be freed kick started my moleskine drawing. The first book is going to be finished today. I went to two concerts with my friends. And I know I want more of that!
I have an awesome computer setup now, even if I haven't taken advantage of it like I should. Not to mention my camera, once I got it working right. I have a pool table now too, thanks to Mae, so the number of friends I have should start skyrocketing. And there were weddings! Nicole got married! Nicole had a dang baby! And the pizza. So much good pizza this year. And the Red Robin thing with Caprice is the best habit I've ever made, after breathing.
Also an election or something. More importantly, I ran (walked) a marathon (half marathon). And it snowed! IT SNOWED!
I finished that blasted home video to dvd project. And I took the last math test of my life for a class so horrible my friends had to nearly physically force me to stay in the class. Which would have been a shame because I'd have missed out on a lot of interesting sights from the long walk home. And it's also the last time I'll have to (might still) walk to school, or anywhere because I finally got my drivers license. There's plenty of emotional baggage there to talk about later.
It was getting the license, though, that got me really thinking. This was a seven year headache, finally over. And how did it feel? Was I relieved? Happy? Thrilled?! None of that. I didn't feel anything. Sure it was nice to have gotten it on the third try, to never had to take the stupid test again. But it didn't feel like anything had changed. Instead it felt normal. Why should it feel any different? I'm 23. I should have had my license a long time ago. This is how it's supposed to feel, because it's what it's supposed to be.
And here we come to the point. Life sucks. Without exception. But so what? Knowing that, should we give up on trying to be happy? Do we collectively say "screw it, I'm done" and stay in bed until we stop breathing. We are all going to die. That's the way it's supposed to be. But the fact of our ending has absolutely no bearing on what we do before then. It's up to us. That's the point of an empty canvas. You can paint whatever you want on it. It might turn out horrible, but until you put acrylic to the brush it's empty and purposeless.
Leaves. I had a lot of them. Back in Massachusetts I found a pretty leaf and knew I should do something with it. Then I found another one and I began collecting them. I wanted to give them to Kenna. I would frame them, label what they were and where I got it. I hoped that by looking at them she would want to see their home for herself. An incentive that, if it couldn't give her hope would at least prevent her from giving up hope. I knew it would be too much to give them to her all at once so I had a plan to stagger them. One framed leaf a week, one reason to see her every week. The leaves became a way of measuring time: every leaf she received was another week she was still alive. And now I'm out. I gave her the last frame the last week of the year. What are the odds of that?
A leaf isn't going to keep her alive. The best I can hope for is that they made her happy. It's up to God now, as is the popular saying. But I'll be damned if I'm giving up on her. But I understand now that, no matter what happens, I have my own life to live. Kenna being diagnosed with cancer, getting my license and framing a few months worth of leaves together made me come to the slow realization of what living my life really means. It doesn't matter if life turns like how I think I want it to. Because as smart as I am I have no clue what is going to happen on January first, or any day after that. That's how it's supposed to be.
In 2008, I grew up.
Mostly. Kind of. Well I'm working on it..But that's what the rest of my life is for.
