Since everyone else is doing it:
So, yeah, it's the last day of the year. The day when all Good Bloggers try to sum up the year while contemplating the later food and champagne. In this case, amplified by the apparent need to sum up an entire decade.
Er, the year first.
The year, not surprisingly, started with me yelling at Cigna (my "health insurance" company), and even less surprisingly, ended with me yelling at Cigna ("Cigna! Raising the blood pressure of our clients, one member at a time!"). One of my chief goals for 2010 is "to spend less time arguing with Cigna," a resolution which will be made easier by the fact that I am not going to be covered by them anymore. (Such a statement, of course, implies that they were, indeed, COVERING ME in the first place.)
Between these Cigna moments were many other things that sparked up what I had assumed would be a rather dull year into an unexpectedly dramatic one. I survived getting hit by a large truck. The trike was then stolen, leading to an exciting cop chase during which trained cops estimated that I am in my early 20s, followed by a considerably less exciting day in juvenile court during which trained attorneys estimated my age more correctly and more legal wrangling, resulting in his incarceration until 2014, not so much because of the trike but because of a long string of other charges. My kinder side (yes, I have one; I just don't use it that much) is hoping that he gets the therapy and help he needs.
And many of you, at the beginning of this year, assured me that riding a trike would be dull.
The year had more to it than this, of course. It had shuttle launches; the occasional concert/outing; some rather good movies (Up, Star Trek, and to my genuine surprise, Inglorious Basterds, the only Quentin Tarentino movie I have enjoyed); some utterly dreadful movies ( GI Joe, Ninja Assassin); bonding with friends; silliness; zebras; unexpected ostriches and peacocks; Leverage, Lost; not putting stickers on the cane; books, more books; various publications but not enough actual writing, which deserves but probably won't get its own post since focusing on my own failures (and this is a bad one - I did not make any of my not particularly ambitious writing goals) is pretty painful; far too much information about the sex lives of famous athletes; far more music; sudden moments of dazzling insight; accepting the damn wheelchair; feeling the planet shift and move; fatigue; doctors; fuzzy blankets; excellent conversations; painful conversations; and some of those moments that you hold deep in your soul, to ponder over, to treasure in the dark hours of the night, or the worst hours of the day, when you remember to remember them.
***********
All this said, since August, my life has been held in an odd limbo, where various things that were supposed to happen, were planned to happen, in the fall, could not happen.
And I'm still there, waiting.
That waiting makes it intensely difficult to summarize this year as good or bad; it's a year of holding. And I'm simply not used to holding. I've certainly had worse years (one reason I'm not jumping on the summarize the decade bandwagon is that would require revisiting 2006, a year that seriously needs to be forgotten). I've certainly had better years. But rarely has it been so difficult to say where I was in the beginning, and where I am now, although if the past five years have taught me anything, it is that life - at least, my life - is not going to be travelling a predictable, planned path, perhaps interspersed by these holding moments.
So I'm not going to make any predictions for 2010. Except to say that I suspect chocolate will be involved somewhere. Because isn't it always?
***********
All of which is to say that my best summary of the year is still probably this, which in the end, was also my favorite publication of the year. I easily could have just posted that again, and left all of this out. But then we couldn't have revisited the cop chase. Hmm.
Er, the year first.
The year, not surprisingly, started with me yelling at Cigna (my "health insurance" company), and even less surprisingly, ended with me yelling at Cigna ("Cigna! Raising the blood pressure of our clients, one member at a time!"). One of my chief goals for 2010 is "to spend less time arguing with Cigna," a resolution which will be made easier by the fact that I am not going to be covered by them anymore. (Such a statement, of course, implies that they were, indeed, COVERING ME in the first place.)
Between these Cigna moments were many other things that sparked up what I had assumed would be a rather dull year into an unexpectedly dramatic one. I survived getting hit by a large truck. The trike was then stolen, leading to an exciting cop chase during which trained cops estimated that I am in my early 20s, followed by a considerably less exciting day in juvenile court during which trained attorneys estimated my age more correctly and more legal wrangling, resulting in his incarceration until 2014, not so much because of the trike but because of a long string of other charges. My kinder side (yes, I have one; I just don't use it that much) is hoping that he gets the therapy and help he needs.
And many of you, at the beginning of this year, assured me that riding a trike would be dull.
The year had more to it than this, of course. It had shuttle launches; the occasional concert/outing; some rather good movies (Up, Star Trek, and to my genuine surprise, Inglorious Basterds, the only Quentin Tarentino movie I have enjoyed); some utterly dreadful movies ( GI Joe, Ninja Assassin); bonding with friends; silliness; zebras; unexpected ostriches and peacocks; Leverage, Lost; not putting stickers on the cane; books, more books; various publications but not enough actual writing, which deserves but probably won't get its own post since focusing on my own failures (and this is a bad one - I did not make any of my not particularly ambitious writing goals) is pretty painful; far too much information about the sex lives of famous athletes; far more music; sudden moments of dazzling insight; accepting the damn wheelchair; feeling the planet shift and move; fatigue; doctors; fuzzy blankets; excellent conversations; painful conversations; and some of those moments that you hold deep in your soul, to ponder over, to treasure in the dark hours of the night, or the worst hours of the day, when you remember to remember them.
***********
All this said, since August, my life has been held in an odd limbo, where various things that were supposed to happen, were planned to happen, in the fall, could not happen.
And I'm still there, waiting.
That waiting makes it intensely difficult to summarize this year as good or bad; it's a year of holding. And I'm simply not used to holding. I've certainly had worse years (one reason I'm not jumping on the summarize the decade bandwagon is that would require revisiting 2006, a year that seriously needs to be forgotten). I've certainly had better years. But rarely has it been so difficult to say where I was in the beginning, and where I am now, although if the past five years have taught me anything, it is that life - at least, my life - is not going to be travelling a predictable, planned path, perhaps interspersed by these holding moments.
So I'm not going to make any predictions for 2010. Except to say that I suspect chocolate will be involved somewhere. Because isn't it always?
***********
All of which is to say that my best summary of the year is still probably this, which in the end, was also my favorite publication of the year. I easily could have just posted that again, and left all of this out. But then we couldn't have revisited the cop chase. Hmm.