a last-minute update before the year is over
I'm on a pay-as-you-go computer on the second floor of the Dunkin' Donuts at Potsdamer Platz, and my computer has been good enough to keep resetting its time limit to 4 minutes, but I'm not sure how long that will last, so my reflections will be necessarily short.
I rang in last new year's drunk and sitting on a couch in the Isbel house's living room. People started shouting the countdown and when they got to HAPPY NEW YEAR! I kissed Nathan, who was also drunk and sitting on the couch. The next morning, somewhat hungover, I drove home to Sacramento and went flying with Dionne.
This new year I will ring in drinking sparkling peach juice and lighting fireworks outside my dorm building. Nathan will be there again, even though I'm 5000 miles from home. Tomorrow who knows what will happen but it won't be the hungover flight of a Cessna 152. It's interesting to me to think about how different things are. I wonder if it makes any difference to the actual course of the year, how one begins it.
I didn't make any resolutions last year. I was disillusioned with them and figured there wasn't any point, they were just words spoken in hypocrisy, never meant to be taken seriously at all, and I'd spare myself the guilt of making them and then breaking them. This year I am not so cynical. But my goals are modest ones.
I lost my virginity in 2007. I turned twenty and left the world of the teens behind (even if only in name). I moved to Germany, I started taking karate, and I made new friends. I decided to stop trying to hold onto the friends that didn't want to hold onto me, and I am at peace with it. My hair grew long. I finished my three-year, money-guzzling pursuit of a pilot's license with success. I put two of my most beloved pets to sleep. I killed two different computers simply by having them in my physical presence. I celebrated the first anniversary of the first real relationship I've ever had. And I continue to become a better person in many ways, be it honesty or self-esteem or social grace.
Has it been a good year? A bad one? I don't know. A year is a long time and my moods and circumstances have been so fleeting and inconsistent that anything longer than five minutes is difficult to judge. But I am content, and my speakers go to 11.
Happy new year!
I rang in last new year's drunk and sitting on a couch in the Isbel house's living room. People started shouting the countdown and when they got to HAPPY NEW YEAR! I kissed Nathan, who was also drunk and sitting on the couch. The next morning, somewhat hungover, I drove home to Sacramento and went flying with Dionne.
This new year I will ring in drinking sparkling peach juice and lighting fireworks outside my dorm building. Nathan will be there again, even though I'm 5000 miles from home. Tomorrow who knows what will happen but it won't be the hungover flight of a Cessna 152. It's interesting to me to think about how different things are. I wonder if it makes any difference to the actual course of the year, how one begins it.
I didn't make any resolutions last year. I was disillusioned with them and figured there wasn't any point, they were just words spoken in hypocrisy, never meant to be taken seriously at all, and I'd spare myself the guilt of making them and then breaking them. This year I am not so cynical. But my goals are modest ones.
I lost my virginity in 2007. I turned twenty and left the world of the teens behind (even if only in name). I moved to Germany, I started taking karate, and I made new friends. I decided to stop trying to hold onto the friends that didn't want to hold onto me, and I am at peace with it. My hair grew long. I finished my three-year, money-guzzling pursuit of a pilot's license with success. I put two of my most beloved pets to sleep. I killed two different computers simply by having them in my physical presence. I celebrated the first anniversary of the first real relationship I've ever had. And I continue to become a better person in many ways, be it honesty or self-esteem or social grace.
Has it been a good year? A bad one? I don't know. A year is a long time and my moods and circumstances have been so fleeting and inconsistent that anything longer than five minutes is difficult to judge. But I am content, and my speakers go to 11.
Happy new year!