Sunday, December 30, 2007

Fail on!

I'm one of those people who needs to have a narrative version of their life, and the act of writing it is as cathartic as it is compelling for me. I feel as though I haven't truly experienced something nor accepted the full weight of an experience unless I take the time to sit and hash it out. There is something to be said for just living and not stopping to reflect, but I'm neurotic and unless I force myself to think about things I'm afraid my life will just go by without meaning, or worse, I'll forget what happened because I have the memory of a goldfish.

And so, before I resolve, I've decided I need to recap my 2007, something I've never actually done. Well, of course I've never recapped 2007 as it's never been the end of this particular year before, but you know what I mean. I've never looked back to see what I've accomplished (or, more likely, failed to accomplish). So, here goes.

Jan-May: School (nothing really astounding happened here)
May-August: Got an internship and worked in NYC. Check.
August-December: School (again, all I recall is frustration, stress, and some fatalism)
Let's see, what else did I do that is of note... ah yes, :
  • Learned the Soulja Boy dance
  • Moved an entire house full of furniture with just myself and one roommate in 6 hours (I've never been so tired)
  • Successfully played my oboe at a wedding, proving by golly, I've still got it
  • Traveled to NY, Pittsburgh, Tallahassee, Tennessee, & Washington D.C. (3 times)
  • Saw Ani DiFranco in concert for the 3rd time, in Prospect Park, after which, surrounded by 100s of mostly lesbian couples, I felt more lonely yet paradoxically happy than I ever have in my life. (That was a lot of parenthetical phrases). I'll never forget that feeling. E.B. White was right.
  • Dated a sociopath.
  • Ate a hotdog at the authentic Coney Island, before they Vegas-ize it.
  • Ran over the Manhattan & Brooklyn bridges, breathing in vaporized steel from the trains that probably took years off of my life
  • Lived with a 23 lb. cat named Mama (and an awesome roommate named Mia. Mama Mia!)
  • Met real-life cowboys at a Honky-Tonk in Nashville
  • Introduced two more people on this earth to the charms of Charleston
  • Raised a buttload of money for cancer research as a Relay for Life team captain
  • Dated another possible sociopath. (More on that here)
Ok enough of that. So here are my resolutions:
  1. Don't date sociopaths
  2. Break 24:00 in a 5k
  3. Be nicer to my parents
  4. Finish my thesis and graduate
  5. Get a job? (these are getting more and more unfeasible)
  6. Read more, shop less
Ok, that's easy enough, right? Shitbucket....

Anyway, that's not very inspiring for the new year, so I'll end with this:

Robert Louis Stevenson once said, "Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits."

2 comments:

Stephanie said...

who's the first sociopath??

Beside the point said...

the army captain guy... he was NUTS