Tuesday, January 5, 2010
One for the road ...
Archives may be gone soon. Stored away, but not deleted. Eat 'em up while you can. Transferring this blog to a new spot shortly.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
2009 Year in Review, I guess.
It's hard to look back at 2009 without putting it in the context of all the negativity and bad "news" we faced all year. My immediate thought is to say, "Oh, 2009 was a shitty year," because, well, that's what everyone else is saying. I've heard it said so many times, in headlines, in Facebook posts, and directly from the people around me, that it's easy to simply accept it as truth.
In reality though, when I think back to everything that happened in the last year (which is kind of a weird thing to do, when you think about it; we only do it once a year, right at New Year's, almost forcing ourselves to come to larger conclusions about a time period, somewhat arbitrarily -- it is fun, after all, and it can provide some interesting perspective into the larger picture of our lives -- when normally we spend most of our existence focusing on the present or immediate future) ... that's when I realize 2009 was probably the best year of my life. I left an awful job and finally took my business full-time. Got married. Got a house. Sara got a good job. We went on some really awesome, memorable vacations. I started riding a bike again for the first time since college, then rode 50 miles and helped raise over $2,000 for the National MS Society. My friendships feel stronger than ever. All in all, things are comfortable, and I'm proud of the accomplishments from the past year.
These are all things I've mostly decided to keep to myself when others say how bad their '09 was -- because it was a bad year for a lot of people, and the last thing they want to hear about is someone who sees it in exactly the opposite way (which is probably why I've decided to "hide" it here, in a blog I haven't legitimately contributed to since '08 and therefore it will likely only be seen by a couple people who stumble across it months after the fact when we're all already entrenched in either the perils or positive events of 2010, and even then, those people are likely to be Nigerians who are searching in Google for things like "pour some for our homies").
Granted, it was far from a perfect year. The good rarely comes without the bad: ever-growing and increasingly frustrating, confusing family issues; my own increase in drinking; self-disappointment and increasingly negative introspection -- basically all the things that can't be summed up as simply as the positive events like "we got a house," but that I'd like to focus on improving this year. My resolutions, I guess.
I really can't say what I expect to happen in 2010. It will certainly have far fewer exciting life events, but does that mean it's assumed that it won't be as good as 2009? I hope not. That's the "weird"-ness of comparing years like this. Without some kind of machine that can calculate and tally our emotions multiple times a day, all year long, it's almost impossible to really judge which years are better than others. But as long as I can create as good of memories as I have in 2009, then I'll be pretty satisfied by the end of 2010.
Happy New Year, all.
In reality though, when I think back to everything that happened in the last year (which is kind of a weird thing to do, when you think about it; we only do it once a year, right at New Year's, almost forcing ourselves to come to larger conclusions about a time period, somewhat arbitrarily -- it is fun, after all, and it can provide some interesting perspective into the larger picture of our lives -- when normally we spend most of our existence focusing on the present or immediate future) ... that's when I realize 2009 was probably the best year of my life. I left an awful job and finally took my business full-time. Got married. Got a house. Sara got a good job. We went on some really awesome, memorable vacations. I started riding a bike again for the first time since college, then rode 50 miles and helped raise over $2,000 for the National MS Society. My friendships feel stronger than ever. All in all, things are comfortable, and I'm proud of the accomplishments from the past year.
These are all things I've mostly decided to keep to myself when others say how bad their '09 was -- because it was a bad year for a lot of people, and the last thing they want to hear about is someone who sees it in exactly the opposite way (which is probably why I've decided to "hide" it here, in a blog I haven't legitimately contributed to since '08 and therefore it will likely only be seen by a couple people who stumble across it months after the fact when we're all already entrenched in either the perils or positive events of 2010, and even then, those people are likely to be Nigerians who are searching in Google for things like "pour some for our homies").
Granted, it was far from a perfect year. The good rarely comes without the bad: ever-growing and increasingly frustrating, confusing family issues; my own increase in drinking; self-disappointment and increasingly negative introspection -- basically all the things that can't be summed up as simply as the positive events like "we got a house," but that I'd like to focus on improving this year. My resolutions, I guess.
I really can't say what I expect to happen in 2010. It will certainly have far fewer exciting life events, but does that mean it's assumed that it won't be as good as 2009? I hope not. That's the "weird"-ness of comparing years like this. Without some kind of machine that can calculate and tally our emotions multiple times a day, all year long, it's almost impossible to really judge which years are better than others. But as long as I can create as good of memories as I have in 2009, then I'll be pretty satisfied by the end of 2010.
Happy New Year, all.
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