that you live in a blur / Of hours and days, months and years
I'm in New York! We abruptly decided to take the bus down for a friend's NYE party, because we live in DC so we can totally do that kind of thing! And the bus ride gave me just enough time to pound this out before the end of the year.
End of year meme, year 9, disco party dance time!
This year was kind of insane because it felt like three years packed into one: I spent four months in Atlanta working and taking classes and four months in Europe traveling and working and taking classes and four months here in DC back in school. Three equal, intense, insane slices.
1. What did you do in 2011 that you'd never done before?
Oh man, okay: Got engaged. Got into a Master of Science program. Went to Africa. Went to the Middle East. Lived in France. Visited 15 countries. Made latkes. Made lentil soup. Loved a math class. Took a boat between continents. Saw the Western Wall. Saw the Berlin Wall. Went through the continental divide in Iceland. Went through the Norweigan Fjords. Took French classes for 10 out of 12 months. Had currywurst. Rode my bike basically every day this fall and winter, even in the rain, even in the cold. Ran two student clubs. Moderated a panel where I had to shut down angry audience members.
This will also be the year where I went from having taken zero economics classes to SO MUCH ECONOMICS IN MY BRAIN ALL THE TIME.
2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I love that this meme reminds me every year of resolutions I've long forgotten. Last year's were:
Learn French FOR REALS THIS TIME. Well, even though it never felt like it in the moment, I got A LOT better, but I still didn't pass my proficiency exam, so let's mark this in-progress. Ugh, why are foreign languages so hard?
Be a nicer person to be in a relationship with. Journal more, whether here or on paper. (I so hate the idea of forgetting huge swaths of my life.) Send stuff I write out to journals instead of slaving over it and then just letting it die in a drawer. Read 50 books (as usual). Learn to say no to overwhelming work projects that will ruin my life, even if that means turning away money Well…. failed on most of those, but in the general insanity of this year I'll take whatever partial progress I managed. Except for the last one, because I QUIT FREELANCING, WOO.
This year's: Deal with my health issues. Improve my concentration skills because multitasking has made me so unfocused. Journal more. And they're not resolutions, per se, but I do need to put on a wedding and land an overseas internship and then move wherever that is for the summer. And manage it all with grace and aplomb? Ha.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Oh man, so many of you people here! And other friends -- it was the year of babies, but sadly none of them close by. One friend just had her THIRD kid, oh man.
4. Did anyone close to you die?
No.
5. What countries did you visit?
OH YEAH: Iceland, France, UK, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Morocco, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Israel, Latvia, Norway, Denmark, Sweden.
6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?
Serenity now. Also wisdom? And a happy and chill wedding full of wonderful people. And classes I like and an awesome summer internship.
7. What date from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
May 25: engage!
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Making it through this hellacious first semester. Forcing myself to forge ahead with French even when it meant making mistakes and being misunderstood.
9. What was your biggest failure?
Letting anxiety turn me into such an unhappy and unpleasant person. Being so crap at keeping in touch with people.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
The usual nonsense with my hips, plus so many things ending in -itis that I have an appointment to see a rheumatologist first thing in the new year. Also carpal tunnel aigh.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
All the travel, my new Macbook (Pro, bitches), a kickass photobook of our summer travels from Pinhole Press for A for Hanukkah.
12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
The incredibly patient person I live with. My lovely friends who listen to my endless venting and make me laugh.
13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
LiveJournal. Oh really, you're going to make horrible changes and then publicly mock your paying users when they object? Nice. Also the patriarchy. Ha.
14. Where did most of your money go?
Travel, oh god, let's not even talk about it. Tuition, ditto. And increasingly expensive bags of coffee beans.
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
TRAVELLL. Oh, and getting engaged didn't suck. Our CSA. A-also my stats class? I kind of LOVED it, after an entire lifetime of thinking I hated/was awful at math. (I nearly failed stats in college.) All those wasted years! But it felt so relevant and useful and learning the software was cool and proving things with math was REALLY cool.
And biking!! I have always wanted to be someone who bikes every day and I think I have somehow finally managed it, between DC's bikesharing and my own sweet wheels. I love it so much.
16. What song will always remind you of 2011?
From Finner, Of Monsters and Men; Video Games, Lana del Rey; When I'm With You, Best Coast; Le Poinçonneur des Lilas, Serge Gainsbourg; Warm Heart of Africa, The Very Best. Oh, and the mainstream darlings: We Found Love, Rihanna; Someone Like You, Adele; Pumped Up Kicks, Foster the People.
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. happier or sadder? Sadder. Grad school has been so very different than I hoped. I need to slough it off and press forward.
ii. thinner or fatter? Maybe thinner, from all the biking.
iii. richer or poorer? Ha. Ha. Ha. Poorer.
18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Sticking with last year's answers: Journaling. Appreciating my life.
19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Ditto here: W-O-R-R-Y-I-N-G. Dicking around online. Complaining. Running late. Also: gossiping, learning worthless Trade models.
20. How will you be spending Christmas?
Spent it in DC, the first time A and I have done the holidays alone together. Christmas Eve I roasted a chicken for the first time in my life. I know this sounds ridiculous -- I cook a lot! But I don't cook with meat that often, and never a whole bird. But this was from our friend's farm and we stuffed it with apples and onions and sage, and made brown sugar rosemary carrots with a pinch of cayenne, and it all came out amazingly. I even made chicken stock out of the leftovers. I become frighteningly domestic in my old age.
Christmas was quiet. I lounged around and read and we made crazy fluffy apple pancakes and then in the late afternoon got on our bikes. Biking through the city on Christmas is amazing -- it's a ghost city, no traffic, and you can swoop down the middle of the road as slow or fast as you want. We rode all the way downtown to McPherson Square to see the Occupy encampment, which I've been wanting to do for months. The list of rules up on poster board at the People's Library read like something you'd see on an LJ community rules page: respect people's gender expression! Use trigger warnings! Ah, my people.
And then we ended up at one of the Belgian restaurants I'd been wanting to try, which is normally impossible to get into, and after dinner had a hazelnut bûche de Noël. Perfect.
21. Did you fall in love in 2011?
Guys, we spent SO MUCH TIME traveling together and still don't hate each other! Awesome.
22. How many one-night stands?
It's getting harder to come up with witty answers to these.
23. What was your favorite TV program?
Communityyyy (#sixseasonsandamovie!), Parks & Rec.
24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Haha -- some of my professors? Whoever decided to put me in the advanced econ class?
25. What was the best book you read?
The Goodreads rundown of my 5-star books in 2011: The Long Song, Andrea Levy; Four Ways to Forgiveness, Ursula K. LeGuin (best beloved); The Psychopath Test, Jon Ronson; Bossypants, of course; The Right Kind of Revolution, Michael Latham.
26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Of Monsters and Men, The Burning Hell, Phoebe Kreutz, Megafaun, Oh Land, Lana del Rey.
27. What did you want and get?
Health insurance, grad school acceptances, fleece-lined tights, public transportation.
28. What did you want and not get?
Time, calmness, a slightly bigger apartment.
29. What was your favorite film of this year?
Oh god, I only saw like three movies this year and none of them were memorable (Tho' I was the only person in the theater laughing out loud at all the Hemingway bits in Midnight in Paris.) I wish I had time to watch movies!
30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 29 in Paris. For breakfast, went to the Marché Raspail, my favorite marché, for muffins and their amazing potato galettes. Spent an hour browsing the stacks at Shakespeare & Company, got coffee at La Caféothèque, the one place in the entire city that could do a really amazing iced americano (unpopular opinion: FRENCH COFFEE IS TERRIBLE). Falafel in the Marais at L'as du Falafel (bien sûr) and dinner at Chez Papa, a little chain that does food from the southwest of France, including fantastic tartines. Iiiit was pretty goddamn amazing.
31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Being able to choose all my own classes this semester, instead of having to do all the terrible required ones. (Trade and Globalization, I'm looking at you.) Having more time or better time management or a time machine or something.
32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?
Dresses forever, stripes, tights & short skirts, those same ugly, comfortable Oxfords. Everything Madewell ever made. Long sweaters and thick wool socks.
33. What kept you sane?
Andrew, biking, coffee, beer. (Biking has done SO much for my mental health, I can't even tell you.)
34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Well I think we can all agree on the delightfulness of Amy Poehler, right?
35. What political issue stirred you the most?
Girls' education (I even did a stats research paper on it!), feminism at large, Occupy.
36. Who did you miss?
As usual: cheapmetaphor, annakovsky, throughadoor, ke_rose_ne. Why can't the best people live close to me?
37. Who was the best new person you met?
I like the built in social network of school.
38. How will you be spending New Year's Eve?
Got up at 6 to catch this bus to New York. Will spend the afternoon wandering around the city and tonight at a houseparty. Possibly something fancy and lacy will be worn. Possibly there will be high gravity beer.
39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011:
I like working more than being in school: which is significant, since I spent most of my 20s thinking it was the other way around. How crazy planning a wedding is. That Marseille kind of sucks. That I really love growing up, and I want it to keep happening.
I love watching all of you come out of the woodwork to post this, too! Hurrah for our years, hurrah for the next one.
End of year meme, year 9, disco party dance time!
This year was kind of insane because it felt like three years packed into one: I spent four months in Atlanta working and taking classes and four months in Europe traveling and working and taking classes and four months here in DC back in school. Three equal, intense, insane slices.
1. What did you do in 2011 that you'd never done before?
Oh man, okay: Got engaged. Got into a Master of Science program. Went to Africa. Went to the Middle East. Lived in France. Visited 15 countries. Made latkes. Made lentil soup. Loved a math class. Took a boat between continents. Saw the Western Wall. Saw the Berlin Wall. Went through the continental divide in Iceland. Went through the Norweigan Fjords. Took French classes for 10 out of 12 months. Had currywurst. Rode my bike basically every day this fall and winter, even in the rain, even in the cold. Ran two student clubs. Moderated a panel where I had to shut down angry audience members.
This will also be the year where I went from having taken zero economics classes to SO MUCH ECONOMICS IN MY BRAIN ALL THE TIME.
2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I love that this meme reminds me every year of resolutions I've long forgotten. Last year's were:
Learn French FOR REALS THIS TIME. Well, even though it never felt like it in the moment, I got A LOT better, but I still didn't pass my proficiency exam, so let's mark this in-progress. Ugh, why are foreign languages so hard?
Be a nicer person to be in a relationship with. Journal more, whether here or on paper. (I so hate the idea of forgetting huge swaths of my life.) Send stuff I write out to journals instead of slaving over it and then just letting it die in a drawer. Read 50 books (as usual). Learn to say no to overwhelming work projects that will ruin my life, even if that means turning away money Well…. failed on most of those, but in the general insanity of this year I'll take whatever partial progress I managed. Except for the last one, because I QUIT FREELANCING, WOO.
This year's: Deal with my health issues. Improve my concentration skills because multitasking has made me so unfocused. Journal more. And they're not resolutions, per se, but I do need to put on a wedding and land an overseas internship and then move wherever that is for the summer. And manage it all with grace and aplomb? Ha.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Oh man, so many of you people here! And other friends -- it was the year of babies, but sadly none of them close by. One friend just had her THIRD kid, oh man.
4. Did anyone close to you die?
No.
5. What countries did you visit?
OH YEAH: Iceland, France, UK, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Morocco, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Israel, Latvia, Norway, Denmark, Sweden.
6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?
Serenity now. Also wisdom? And a happy and chill wedding full of wonderful people. And classes I like and an awesome summer internship.
7. What date from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
May 25: engage!
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Making it through this hellacious first semester. Forcing myself to forge ahead with French even when it meant making mistakes and being misunderstood.
9. What was your biggest failure?
Letting anxiety turn me into such an unhappy and unpleasant person. Being so crap at keeping in touch with people.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
The usual nonsense with my hips, plus so many things ending in -itis that I have an appointment to see a rheumatologist first thing in the new year. Also carpal tunnel aigh.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
All the travel, my new Macbook (Pro, bitches), a kickass photobook of our summer travels from Pinhole Press for A for Hanukkah.
12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
The incredibly patient person I live with. My lovely friends who listen to my endless venting and make me laugh.
13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
LiveJournal. Oh really, you're going to make horrible changes and then publicly mock your paying users when they object? Nice. Also the patriarchy. Ha.
14. Where did most of your money go?
Travel, oh god, let's not even talk about it. Tuition, ditto. And increasingly expensive bags of coffee beans.
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
TRAVELLL. Oh, and getting engaged didn't suck. Our CSA. A-also my stats class? I kind of LOVED it, after an entire lifetime of thinking I hated/was awful at math. (I nearly failed stats in college.) All those wasted years! But it felt so relevant and useful and learning the software was cool and proving things with math was REALLY cool.
And biking!! I have always wanted to be someone who bikes every day and I think I have somehow finally managed it, between DC's bikesharing and my own sweet wheels. I love it so much.
16. What song will always remind you of 2011?
From Finner, Of Monsters and Men; Video Games, Lana del Rey; When I'm With You, Best Coast; Le Poinçonneur des Lilas, Serge Gainsbourg; Warm Heart of Africa, The Very Best. Oh, and the mainstream darlings: We Found Love, Rihanna; Someone Like You, Adele; Pumped Up Kicks, Foster the People.
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. happier or sadder? Sadder. Grad school has been so very different than I hoped. I need to slough it off and press forward.
ii. thinner or fatter? Maybe thinner, from all the biking.
iii. richer or poorer? Ha. Ha. Ha. Poorer.
18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Sticking with last year's answers: Journaling. Appreciating my life.
19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Ditto here: W-O-R-R-Y-I-N-G. Dicking around online. Complaining. Running late. Also: gossiping, learning worthless Trade models.
20. How will you be spending Christmas?
Spent it in DC, the first time A and I have done the holidays alone together. Christmas Eve I roasted a chicken for the first time in my life. I know this sounds ridiculous -- I cook a lot! But I don't cook with meat that often, and never a whole bird. But this was from our friend's farm and we stuffed it with apples and onions and sage, and made brown sugar rosemary carrots with a pinch of cayenne, and it all came out amazingly. I even made chicken stock out of the leftovers. I become frighteningly domestic in my old age.
Christmas was quiet. I lounged around and read and we made crazy fluffy apple pancakes and then in the late afternoon got on our bikes. Biking through the city on Christmas is amazing -- it's a ghost city, no traffic, and you can swoop down the middle of the road as slow or fast as you want. We rode all the way downtown to McPherson Square to see the Occupy encampment, which I've been wanting to do for months. The list of rules up on poster board at the People's Library read like something you'd see on an LJ community rules page: respect people's gender expression! Use trigger warnings! Ah, my people.
And then we ended up at one of the Belgian restaurants I'd been wanting to try, which is normally impossible to get into, and after dinner had a hazelnut bûche de Noël. Perfect.
21. Did you fall in love in 2011?
Guys, we spent SO MUCH TIME traveling together and still don't hate each other! Awesome.
22. How many one-night stands?
It's getting harder to come up with witty answers to these.
23. What was your favorite TV program?
Communityyyy (#sixseasonsandamovie!), Parks & Rec.
24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Haha -- some of my professors? Whoever decided to put me in the advanced econ class?
25. What was the best book you read?
The Goodreads rundown of my 5-star books in 2011: The Long Song, Andrea Levy; Four Ways to Forgiveness, Ursula K. LeGuin (best beloved); The Psychopath Test, Jon Ronson; Bossypants, of course; The Right Kind of Revolution, Michael Latham.
26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Of Monsters and Men, The Burning Hell, Phoebe Kreutz, Megafaun, Oh Land, Lana del Rey.
27. What did you want and get?
Health insurance, grad school acceptances, fleece-lined tights, public transportation.
28. What did you want and not get?
Time, calmness, a slightly bigger apartment.
29. What was your favorite film of this year?
Oh god, I only saw like three movies this year and none of them were memorable (Tho' I was the only person in the theater laughing out loud at all the Hemingway bits in Midnight in Paris.) I wish I had time to watch movies!
30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 29 in Paris. For breakfast, went to the Marché Raspail, my favorite marché, for muffins and their amazing potato galettes. Spent an hour browsing the stacks at Shakespeare & Company, got coffee at La Caféothèque, the one place in the entire city that could do a really amazing iced americano (unpopular opinion: FRENCH COFFEE IS TERRIBLE). Falafel in the Marais at L'as du Falafel (bien sûr) and dinner at Chez Papa, a little chain that does food from the southwest of France, including fantastic tartines. Iiiit was pretty goddamn amazing.
31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Being able to choose all my own classes this semester, instead of having to do all the terrible required ones. (Trade and Globalization, I'm looking at you.) Having more time or better time management or a time machine or something.
32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?
Dresses forever, stripes, tights & short skirts, those same ugly, comfortable Oxfords. Everything Madewell ever made. Long sweaters and thick wool socks.
33. What kept you sane?
Andrew, biking, coffee, beer. (Biking has done SO much for my mental health, I can't even tell you.)
34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Well I think we can all agree on the delightfulness of Amy Poehler, right?
35. What political issue stirred you the most?
Girls' education (I even did a stats research paper on it!), feminism at large, Occupy.
36. Who did you miss?
As usual: cheapmetaphor, annakovsky, throughadoor, ke_rose_ne. Why can't the best people live close to me?
37. Who was the best new person you met?
I like the built in social network of school.
38. How will you be spending New Year's Eve?
Got up at 6 to catch this bus to New York. Will spend the afternoon wandering around the city and tonight at a houseparty. Possibly something fancy and lacy will be worn. Possibly there will be high gravity beer.
39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011:
I like working more than being in school: which is significant, since I spent most of my 20s thinking it was the other way around. How crazy planning a wedding is. That Marseille kind of sucks. That I really love growing up, and I want it to keep happening.
I love watching all of you come out of the woodwork to post this, too! Hurrah for our years, hurrah for the next one.