(no subject)
The meme I do every year in the first days of January. (Except I keep tinkering with it to make it more relevant to my life, adding questions and deleting others and rephrasing some, so it never ends up being the same meme two years in a row, quite.)
Every year, it's amazing how much filling this out helps me to realize where I'm at in my life, what I've learned, how I've changed, how I haven't, and just how much HAPPENS in a year. Man oh man. A year is longer than it feels.
Anyway...
What did you do this year that you’d never done before?
Travel to Japan. Work full-time and earn my own living. Work up the courage to initiate important ‘relationship conversations’ (romantic, platonic, and familial!) and follow them through to reasonably satisfying conclusions. Sing with a full orchestra.
What moments from this year will remain significant in your memory?
Attending Takarazuka performances and demachis in Tokyo. Completing my last exam and realizing I was done with college now. Harvesting fava beans until I was sore and sunburned and then jumping naked in a pond to cool off. Getting an email from my thesis advisor and crying so hard I couldn’t breathe. Listening to the cast of Threepenny Opera sing the tongue twister I taught them. Watching the orchestra file out to play the suite of pieces from Carmen with the flowers I had given them stuck in their clothes and hair and instruments. Seeing my little brother for the first time after his surgery. Standing onstage after the encore at my senior recital holding bouquets of flowers from friends and family as the audience sang ‘Happy Birthday to me. Kneeling by a bed and having my bare back stroked and being told ‘you’re so lovely’ by someone who was about to cry. Watching my little brother graduate. Lying in the hospital E.R. not being able to speak and not knowing what was wrong with me. Listening to my mother and father fight this summer and being scared and worried and angry. The Mannion and Kathy getting all excited about my voice and telling me that it has a future.
… WHEW. This really has been quite a year, huh?
What was your biggest achievement of this year?
Graduating college with honors. Avoiding a complete nervous breakdown following graduation. Beginning to make the first steps towards pursuing a career in the performing arts despite my fears and sense of inadequacy. Working a pretty boring full-time job without letting it suck my soul. Paying off debt.
What was your biggest failure?
Not reaching out to people more, or more consistently. Being incredibly poor at staying in touch with those who are important in my life. This is hardly a new failing, but I think I was even worse at it this year than usual, and I saw much more clearly the losses it causes me and the ways in which it hurts people I care about.
Did you suffer illness or injury?
Yup. Stayed overnight in the hospital for the first time. Jury is still out on exactly what might have been wrong with me, but so far the medications are working, so… yeah.
What was the best thing you spent money on?
Voice lessons and Takarazuka-related purchases, especially those tickets to actual shows. Tickets to things in general. Books and music.
Where did most of your money go?
… See above. Plus, you know, food and whatnot.
Also, paying off debt. Looking back, I can’t quite believe how fast I got rid of all that. Damn did I work hard and save a lot. Well done, self!
What did you get really, really excited about?
Being part of a theater production again, for the first time in several years, and the avalanche of positive feedback I got about my performance. The whole time I spent in Japan. Watching my brother pass a ton of milestones- surgery, college applications and acceptances and decisions, graduation, going off to college, finding an awesome girlfriend, learning to drive, etc. Starting lessons with the Mannion. Some books I read and some thoughts and ideas and conversations they spawned.
What do you wish you’d done more of?
Called/written/seen people. Practiced. Exercised. Worked on languages. Sought out semi-spontaneous adventures.
What do you wish you’d done less of?
Avoided the above by spending time in my room on my computer. Bought things I didn’t need.
How did you spend the winter holidays?
I flew home on Christmas Day. My family picked me up at the airport, and we went directly to Ari’s house for a feast of homemade Thai food, plus the traditional tangerine sorbet and ramble around the neighborhood and howling carols at the neighbors. I exulted in the gorgeous Los Angeles sunshine and warmth, it having been -3 degrees when I left Minnesota.
New Year’s (my family’s big holiday) Ari and Stephan and Margaret and Jeff and Jan and my family all had a feast at our house followed by a lot of games and silliness. At midnight, as is Club Dahlia tradition, we lit candles out on the driveway, sang Dona Nobis Pacem, and chatted for a while about things we’d been grateful for in the past year, and resolutions for the year to come. Then back inside for cake and champagne and a little bit more games and silliness. Adult guests departed for home, and Ari and Stephan and I all fell asleep in my bed (after some terror and confusion and hilarity regarding the Skunk That Wasn’t, an incident which I suspect has already become an indelible part of the Club Dahlia anecdotal canon.)
What was the best book you read?
For the second year, I kept a list of all the books I read cover-to-cover, along with the names of the authors and the dates I finished them. Favorites are bolded, ones that I had read before have an asterisk next to them. (Incidentally, I’m trying to come up with a more useful system. Right now all this really does for me is make me slightly more likely to finish books I start. But it doesn’t take into account all the short stories and essays and partly-finished books I read, nor does it help me remember what the contents of the book was, which is what I really need help with… Oy.)
Anyway. I think my real favorite-favorites were Colette’s short stories and the Italo Calvino. I also remember really enjoying The Book of Tea, but for some reason I didn’t bold it. Maybe I was in a bad mood on the 27th of June.
What was the best movie you saw?
I loved Wall-E for the animation, although I thought it botched its message a bit. But oh, Pixar, your artists. They are awesome.
Also, the movie Water Lilies. I can’t tell whether or not it’s a good movie, but various bits of the moods and interactions and attitudes of the three main characters resembled my own adolescent sexual experiences so intensely and eerily that it scared me. And also made me feel a little less weird and alone. It was both a creepy experience and a comforting one, watching that movie.
What was your favorite musical ‘discovery’?
Nina Simone and Camille Dalmais are tied for first. I’ve been listening to both of them constantly in the past few months. They are both genre-defying, vocally chameleonic musical auteuses who seem to be singing directly into my ear. Love.
For personal music making… god, I don’t even know. I’m hoping that my biggest music discoveries so far are waiting just around the corner. But I guess I learned that my voice has the potential to be a really good one. Which is a pretty awesome discovery, if I can only really believe it and continue working to prove it to myself…
What did you want and get?
A bachelor’s degree. Financial independence. Encouragement and a nudge along the path towards actually training myself for a performing career. Some interesting romantic relationships. Greater maturity and capability and a general feeling that yeah, I’m doing an okay job of growing up.
What did you want and not get?
Hot biceps. Awesome coloratura technique. True love. But that’s okay, I’m not giving up on any of them just yet. 2009’s another year, right?
What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 22, right on schedule on April 6th, which was also the day of my senior voice recital. It was a deeply fun and emotionally exhausting day. I can’t remember when else I have felt so incredibly, thoroughly loved.
What changes did you make to your appearance/style?
I got my hair cut really really short, to surprisingly widespread approval. I also started trying to dress a little bit more… adultly? I dunno. Trying to phase out some of the shabbier and more college-student-y items and ways of dressing. Except that for the last few months I’ve been rolling out of bed at 5 AM many mornings and going to work 8 hours in a kitchen, which means that I can’t wear as much fancy stuff as I actually like to. People at work think I look ‘dressed up’ if I wear anything much nicer than a t-shirt and jeans. Sigh.
What kept you sane?
Tea. Naps. Housemates. Listening to music. The internet as time-waster and distracter.
What celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Oh those damn Takarazuka performers. They just won’t quit being adorable. I think the really major new Takarazuka-related crush was on Kiryuu Sonoka. Also on the entirety of Star Troupe, which I’m reluctantly admitting is, in fact, my current favorite troupe. I’m sorry, Moon Troupe. I’m still loyal at heart, just… uh, distracted.
And I guess Camille probably counts, although I’m not quite sure whether I fancy her or wish I were her.
What issues particularly caught your attention?
Election. Duh.
Also, what’s going on in Gaza right now is fucking agonizing. Angry human beings armed with heavy weaponry and a sense of self-righteousness are the most terrifying things I can imagine.
Who did you miss?
My family, as usual. And Ari and Stephan and Jessey. And college friends of mine who graduated and moved away this year. Dammit, why does my heart have to keep getting scattered all over the country/globe? I wish I could take all the people I care about and just make us all live within a hundred miles of each other.
Who was the best new person you met?
Andi. And my new housemates - I knew Laney before, a little bit, but Callie and Becca and Raina were new to me, and now I have trouble imagining not being friends with them. Mattia gets an honorary mention even though I didn’t really get to know her, because she struck me as being awesome enough that I really hope our paths cross again someday. Also, a small collection of oddball regulars and a couple of coworkers - the Ginkgo Nuts - who make my job a lot less boring, and sometimes add little bits of human poetry to it.
Photographs of yourself or of significant moments in the year?
With my alto crew, at the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto, one of the loveliest public gardens I’ve ever seen. We look happy because we really, really were. God that was an awesome tour.
Homicidal and faking pregnancy at the Threepenny dress rehearsal. I was lipsyncing my way through this scene, as I was too ill to speak and was trying to save my voice for opening night. But even though I probably had to go hack up a lung again after this scene was over, I’m pretty sure I was still having a good time.
Immediately afterward, I got a haircut! Boy, I could hardly wait until 3PO was over to chop it off.
Final dinner with the choir seniors. (I swear my social life didn’t entirely revolve around choir, that’s just what pictures got taken of. Really.) We were trying to look somber and Victorian family portrait-ish.
Last time building a tent in the living room and playing M.A.S.H. with my then-housemates. Kristyn isn’t in the photo because she’s taking it.
Me and my family at my graduation.
In the communal kitchen of the hippie farm where Jessey and I went over the summer to work and play for a little while. I spent a lot of time messing around in this kitchen and got quite attached to it. In the foreground is the tame possum, which turned up to be fed banana creme pie and play with the evil adorable kitten. God, I miss that farm.
These, obviously, are not photos of me. They’re of one of my very favorite Takarazuka performers, who retired from the company this summer. On the left is her in her last role (as Sally in Me and My Girl) and on the right is a photo taken as she was leaving the theater for the last time. I was quite miserable about her retirement, possibly more so because it overlapped with the incredibly sick awful scary time this summer when I could hardly move. But! She’s pursuing a new performing career now, and has shows lined up, and generally didn’t disappear the way retired Takarazuka performers (particularly those who specialize in female roles) often do. And I got better! So this photo reminds me of both the awfulness of the summer, and also how much happier things are now.
Okay, ‘nuff mush. To wrap up, a couple of photos of me which Ari took on Christmas Day.
What worries do you have about the coming year?
Doing my part for La Divina. Making enough money to take all the voice lessons and do at least some of the traveling I want to do. Living up to my own and my teacher’s high expectations for my technical progress. Finding the courage and energy to actively pursue my goals and dreams. Managing to stay in touch with all the people I love, even though so many of them are far away or very busy and I am an inveterate schmuck.
Also, the beginning of Obama’s presidency. Please let him live up to even a third of what he has promised to attempt on behalf of this country. Please, please, please.
What are you excited about for the coming year?
All of the above!
What life lessons did you learn this past year?
I have as much power over my own life as I decide to accept responsibility for. When I say “I can’t”, what I am usually actually saying is “I don’t think I’m strong enough” and/or “I’m scared of the consequences”. And, sometimes, “I don’t actually want to, but I’m afraid to admit this to myself.” And that these moments are important for me to pay attention to.
Also, sometimes this year, I actually think I am attractive and interesting - not just because someone else says so, but because I think so. And yes, this definitely counts as a life lesson for me. A huge one.
Resolutions?
- Be better at showing I care about people. This means calling people back (and maybe even calling them first, woahhh what a thought!), answering emails more promptly, being better about making dates and whatnot.
- Continue to work on being nicer to myself.
- PRACTICE
Happy new year, everybody!
Every year, it's amazing how much filling this out helps me to realize where I'm at in my life, what I've learned, how I've changed, how I haven't, and just how much HAPPENS in a year. Man oh man. A year is longer than it feels.
Anyway...
What did you do this year that you’d never done before?
Travel to Japan. Work full-time and earn my own living. Work up the courage to initiate important ‘relationship conversations’ (romantic, platonic, and familial!) and follow them through to reasonably satisfying conclusions. Sing with a full orchestra.
What moments from this year will remain significant in your memory?
Attending Takarazuka performances and demachis in Tokyo. Completing my last exam and realizing I was done with college now. Harvesting fava beans until I was sore and sunburned and then jumping naked in a pond to cool off. Getting an email from my thesis advisor and crying so hard I couldn’t breathe. Listening to the cast of Threepenny Opera sing the tongue twister I taught them. Watching the orchestra file out to play the suite of pieces from Carmen with the flowers I had given them stuck in their clothes and hair and instruments. Seeing my little brother for the first time after his surgery. Standing onstage after the encore at my senior recital holding bouquets of flowers from friends and family as the audience sang ‘Happy Birthday to me. Kneeling by a bed and having my bare back stroked and being told ‘you’re so lovely’ by someone who was about to cry. Watching my little brother graduate. Lying in the hospital E.R. not being able to speak and not knowing what was wrong with me. Listening to my mother and father fight this summer and being scared and worried and angry. The Mannion and Kathy getting all excited about my voice and telling me that it has a future.
… WHEW. This really has been quite a year, huh?
What was your biggest achievement of this year?
Graduating college with honors. Avoiding a complete nervous breakdown following graduation. Beginning to make the first steps towards pursuing a career in the performing arts despite my fears and sense of inadequacy. Working a pretty boring full-time job without letting it suck my soul. Paying off debt.
What was your biggest failure?
Not reaching out to people more, or more consistently. Being incredibly poor at staying in touch with those who are important in my life. This is hardly a new failing, but I think I was even worse at it this year than usual, and I saw much more clearly the losses it causes me and the ways in which it hurts people I care about.
Did you suffer illness or injury?
Yup. Stayed overnight in the hospital for the first time. Jury is still out on exactly what might have been wrong with me, but so far the medications are working, so… yeah.
What was the best thing you spent money on?
Voice lessons and Takarazuka-related purchases, especially those tickets to actual shows. Tickets to things in general. Books and music.
Where did most of your money go?
… See above. Plus, you know, food and whatnot.
Also, paying off debt. Looking back, I can’t quite believe how fast I got rid of all that. Damn did I work hard and save a lot. Well done, self!
What did you get really, really excited about?
Being part of a theater production again, for the first time in several years, and the avalanche of positive feedback I got about my performance. The whole time I spent in Japan. Watching my brother pass a ton of milestones- surgery, college applications and acceptances and decisions, graduation, going off to college, finding an awesome girlfriend, learning to drive, etc. Starting lessons with the Mannion. Some books I read and some thoughts and ideas and conversations they spawned.
What do you wish you’d done more of?
Called/written/seen people. Practiced. Exercised. Worked on languages. Sought out semi-spontaneous adventures.
What do you wish you’d done less of?
Avoided the above by spending time in my room on my computer. Bought things I didn’t need.
How did you spend the winter holidays?
I flew home on Christmas Day. My family picked me up at the airport, and we went directly to Ari’s house for a feast of homemade Thai food, plus the traditional tangerine sorbet and ramble around the neighborhood and howling carols at the neighbors. I exulted in the gorgeous Los Angeles sunshine and warmth, it having been -3 degrees when I left Minnesota.
New Year’s (my family’s big holiday) Ari and Stephan and Margaret and Jeff and Jan and my family all had a feast at our house followed by a lot of games and silliness. At midnight, as is Club Dahlia tradition, we lit candles out on the driveway, sang Dona Nobis Pacem, and chatted for a while about things we’d been grateful for in the past year, and resolutions for the year to come. Then back inside for cake and champagne and a little bit more games and silliness. Adult guests departed for home, and Ari and Stephan and I all fell asleep in my bed (after some terror and confusion and hilarity regarding the Skunk That Wasn’t, an incident which I suspect has already become an indelible part of the Club Dahlia anecdotal canon.)
What was the best book you read?
For the second year, I kept a list of all the books I read cover-to-cover, along with the names of the authors and the dates I finished them. Favorites are bolded, ones that I had read before have an asterisk next to them. (Incidentally, I’m trying to come up with a more useful system. Right now all this really does for me is make me slightly more likely to finish books I start. But it doesn’t take into account all the short stories and essays and partly-finished books I read, nor does it help me remember what the contents of the book was, which is what I really need help with… Oy.)
Anyway. I think my real favorite-favorites were Colette’s short stories and the Italo Calvino. I also remember really enjoying The Book of Tea, but for some reason I didn’t bold it. Maybe I was in a bad mood on the 27th of June.
What was the best movie you saw?
I loved Wall-E for the animation, although I thought it botched its message a bit. But oh, Pixar, your artists. They are awesome.
Also, the movie Water Lilies. I can’t tell whether or not it’s a good movie, but various bits of the moods and interactions and attitudes of the three main characters resembled my own adolescent sexual experiences so intensely and eerily that it scared me. And also made me feel a little less weird and alone. It was both a creepy experience and a comforting one, watching that movie.
What was your favorite musical ‘discovery’?
Nina Simone and Camille Dalmais are tied for first. I’ve been listening to both of them constantly in the past few months. They are both genre-defying, vocally chameleonic musical auteuses who seem to be singing directly into my ear. Love.
For personal music making… god, I don’t even know. I’m hoping that my biggest music discoveries so far are waiting just around the corner. But I guess I learned that my voice has the potential to be a really good one. Which is a pretty awesome discovery, if I can only really believe it and continue working to prove it to myself…
What did you want and get?
A bachelor’s degree. Financial independence. Encouragement and a nudge along the path towards actually training myself for a performing career. Some interesting romantic relationships. Greater maturity and capability and a general feeling that yeah, I’m doing an okay job of growing up.
What did you want and not get?
Hot biceps. Awesome coloratura technique. True love. But that’s okay, I’m not giving up on any of them just yet. 2009’s another year, right?
What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 22, right on schedule on April 6th, which was also the day of my senior voice recital. It was a deeply fun and emotionally exhausting day. I can’t remember when else I have felt so incredibly, thoroughly loved.
What changes did you make to your appearance/style?
I got my hair cut really really short, to surprisingly widespread approval. I also started trying to dress a little bit more… adultly? I dunno. Trying to phase out some of the shabbier and more college-student-y items and ways of dressing. Except that for the last few months I’ve been rolling out of bed at 5 AM many mornings and going to work 8 hours in a kitchen, which means that I can’t wear as much fancy stuff as I actually like to. People at work think I look ‘dressed up’ if I wear anything much nicer than a t-shirt and jeans. Sigh.
What kept you sane?
Tea. Naps. Housemates. Listening to music. The internet as time-waster and distracter.
What celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Oh those damn Takarazuka performers. They just won’t quit being adorable. I think the really major new Takarazuka-related crush was on Kiryuu Sonoka. Also on the entirety of Star Troupe, which I’m reluctantly admitting is, in fact, my current favorite troupe. I’m sorry, Moon Troupe. I’m still loyal at heart, just… uh, distracted.
And I guess Camille probably counts, although I’m not quite sure whether I fancy her or wish I were her.
What issues particularly caught your attention?
Election. Duh.
Also, what’s going on in Gaza right now is fucking agonizing. Angry human beings armed with heavy weaponry and a sense of self-righteousness are the most terrifying things I can imagine.
Who did you miss?
My family, as usual. And Ari and Stephan and Jessey. And college friends of mine who graduated and moved away this year. Dammit, why does my heart have to keep getting scattered all over the country/globe? I wish I could take all the people I care about and just make us all live within a hundred miles of each other.
Who was the best new person you met?
Andi. And my new housemates - I knew Laney before, a little bit, but Callie and Becca and Raina were new to me, and now I have trouble imagining not being friends with them. Mattia gets an honorary mention even though I didn’t really get to know her, because she struck me as being awesome enough that I really hope our paths cross again someday. Also, a small collection of oddball regulars and a couple of coworkers - the Ginkgo Nuts - who make my job a lot less boring, and sometimes add little bits of human poetry to it.
Photographs of yourself or of significant moments in the year?
With my alto crew, at the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto, one of the loveliest public gardens I’ve ever seen. We look happy because we really, really were. God that was an awesome tour.
Homicidal and faking pregnancy at the Threepenny dress rehearsal. I was lipsyncing my way through this scene, as I was too ill to speak and was trying to save my voice for opening night. But even though I probably had to go hack up a lung again after this scene was over, I’m pretty sure I was still having a good time.
Immediately afterward, I got a haircut! Boy, I could hardly wait until 3PO was over to chop it off.
Final dinner with the choir seniors. (I swear my social life didn’t entirely revolve around choir, that’s just what pictures got taken of. Really.) We were trying to look somber and Victorian family portrait-ish.
Last time building a tent in the living room and playing M.A.S.H. with my then-housemates. Kristyn isn’t in the photo because she’s taking it.
Me and my family at my graduation.
In the communal kitchen of the hippie farm where Jessey and I went over the summer to work and play for a little while. I spent a lot of time messing around in this kitchen and got quite attached to it. In the foreground is the tame possum, which turned up to be fed banana creme pie and play with the evil adorable kitten. God, I miss that farm.
These, obviously, are not photos of me. They’re of one of my very favorite Takarazuka performers, who retired from the company this summer. On the left is her in her last role (as Sally in Me and My Girl) and on the right is a photo taken as she was leaving the theater for the last time. I was quite miserable about her retirement, possibly more so because it overlapped with the incredibly sick awful scary time this summer when I could hardly move. But! She’s pursuing a new performing career now, and has shows lined up, and generally didn’t disappear the way retired Takarazuka performers (particularly those who specialize in female roles) often do. And I got better! So this photo reminds me of both the awfulness of the summer, and also how much happier things are now.
Okay, ‘nuff mush. To wrap up, a couple of photos of me which Ari took on Christmas Day.
What worries do you have about the coming year?
Doing my part for La Divina. Making enough money to take all the voice lessons and do at least some of the traveling I want to do. Living up to my own and my teacher’s high expectations for my technical progress. Finding the courage and energy to actively pursue my goals and dreams. Managing to stay in touch with all the people I love, even though so many of them are far away or very busy and I am an inveterate schmuck.
Also, the beginning of Obama’s presidency. Please let him live up to even a third of what he has promised to attempt on behalf of this country. Please, please, please.
What are you excited about for the coming year?
All of the above!
What life lessons did you learn this past year?
I have as much power over my own life as I decide to accept responsibility for. When I say “I can’t”, what I am usually actually saying is “I don’t think I’m strong enough” and/or “I’m scared of the consequences”. And, sometimes, “I don’t actually want to, but I’m afraid to admit this to myself.” And that these moments are important for me to pay attention to.
Also, sometimes this year, I actually think I am attractive and interesting - not just because someone else says so, but because I think so. And yes, this definitely counts as a life lesson for me. A huge one.
Resolutions?
- Be better at showing I care about people. This means calling people back (and maybe even calling them first, woahhh what a thought!), answering emails more promptly, being better about making dates and whatnot.
- Continue to work on being nicer to myself.
- PRACTICE
Happy new year, everybody!