2012: This is Why I Can't Have Nice Things
I suppose there is some benefit to writing here, because I can look back and see that this time last year I was happy. I said I could kiss 2011, didn't I? I said I could kiss it with tongue. And January 2012 Me hoped that January 2013 Me would feel the same way. And that's funny, because in the long run, optimists are always always wrong.
It's not that bad. I got my dream job in 2012. I traveled all over the world. I became a regular talking head on television news. I did research that I was proud of. I was quoted on the front page of a Very Serious Newspaper. I spent a week-and-a-half training aerial circus arts on a tropical island. It made me better. I bought a house. My eye exploded. I spent a week lying face-down and immobile. I spent a month half blind. I got out of shape. I moved into my house. I threw a party on New Year's Eve.
We did not throw a lot of big parties in Bunker 2. It was a little smaller than the Concrete Bunker, a little more out of the way, a little more sedate. We had neighbors who did not appreciate drunken escapees from the Folsom Street Fair running down the hall or leaving their cigarette butts all over their nice roof deck. The Concrete Bunker was a that place where we ran a nightclub. Bunker 2 was that place where we had half a dozen people over for movies and cocktails. I looked around Bunker 3 at midnight and I saw videos being projected on the wall and heard music playing on J's jury-rigged sound system. My guests decimated the bar like so many booze locusts, systematically reducing the number of boxes marked "liquor" stacked in the bedroom from five to two. My floors were sticky. I found plastic cups in every corner. And I was happy. Bunker 3 marks a return to proper form. Perhaps next year, J and I will rig a balloon drop from our cavernous ceilings. It's been a while since I've started the year by picking up the corpses of hundreds of burst balloons from my living room floor--long enough that I am willing to do it again.
Running the party means being too busy to ever quite get drunk. A girl cried on my shoulder. There was puke on the couch. The occasional guest taxed my never-abundant supply of charity and patience. I wrestled with the trash while wearing my opera gown. I had to send R home with the bartender because there was already someone passed out on my sofa. I saw my very first aerial teacher and small contingent of my co-workers and the Greek acrobat I met in the Dominican Republic. I went to bed before dawn, too tired to think about what I want more of and what will be different in 2013. And when I woke up in the new year and my things away in boxes (my things will be in boxes for months to come) and didn't make any resolutions at all.
It's not that bad. I got my dream job in 2012. I traveled all over the world. I became a regular talking head on television news. I did research that I was proud of. I was quoted on the front page of a Very Serious Newspaper. I spent a week-and-a-half training aerial circus arts on a tropical island. It made me better. I bought a house. My eye exploded. I spent a week lying face-down and immobile. I spent a month half blind. I got out of shape. I moved into my house. I threw a party on New Year's Eve.
We did not throw a lot of big parties in Bunker 2. It was a little smaller than the Concrete Bunker, a little more out of the way, a little more sedate. We had neighbors who did not appreciate drunken escapees from the Folsom Street Fair running down the hall or leaving their cigarette butts all over their nice roof deck. The Concrete Bunker was a that place where we ran a nightclub. Bunker 2 was that place where we had half a dozen people over for movies and cocktails. I looked around Bunker 3 at midnight and I saw videos being projected on the wall and heard music playing on J's jury-rigged sound system. My guests decimated the bar like so many booze locusts, systematically reducing the number of boxes marked "liquor" stacked in the bedroom from five to two. My floors were sticky. I found plastic cups in every corner. And I was happy. Bunker 3 marks a return to proper form. Perhaps next year, J and I will rig a balloon drop from our cavernous ceilings. It's been a while since I've started the year by picking up the corpses of hundreds of burst balloons from my living room floor--long enough that I am willing to do it again.
Running the party means being too busy to ever quite get drunk. A girl cried on my shoulder. There was puke on the couch. The occasional guest taxed my never-abundant supply of charity and patience. I wrestled with the trash while wearing my opera gown. I had to send R home with the bartender because there was already someone passed out on my sofa. I saw my very first aerial teacher and small contingent of my co-workers and the Greek acrobat I met in the Dominican Republic. I went to bed before dawn, too tired to think about what I want more of and what will be different in 2013. And when I woke up in the new year and my things away in boxes (my things will be in boxes for months to come) and didn't make any resolutions at all.