Here it is with less than 12 hours left in the year and I ran out of time to compose that post I wanted to. So instead of my usual SOC babble about all the valuable things that I’ve learned about myself this year (which, upon reflection, is a horrible idea for a post in the first place), here’s a brief, random, unordered list of highlights.
Favorite rediscovery: Music. All of it. It wasn’t until April or May that I realized I wasn’t listening to anything and hadn’t for months. Part of that was the broken iMac and lack of work commute so I wasn’t listening to my iPod. But I now find myself absolutely insatiable; I want to soak everything up. I credit a lot of my breaking out of last winter’s depression to bands like The Fratellis and The Hidden Cameras
and of course The Wave Pictures … and Elvis Costello. And The Beatles. And Bob Mould. And The Decemberists (best show of 2008, by the way). And The Jam. And The Long Winters. And…you see what I’m saying.
Favorite purchase: my new couch. Oh, it’s comfy.
Most memorable event: Colleen and Gardiner’s Four-Day Wedding Extravaganza. I had a reading. I gave a toast. I found the priest for whom I would go Catholic. I met fantastic people. I headbanged. Most importantly, I became convinced that there will never be a wedding to top that one. It was, and I mean this without any sort of hyperbole, perfect.
Best website aside from the one I work on: Let Me Google That For You. Folks, I cannot tell you how much I love this site. I am in love with this site. I have yet to direct people to it, but have been able to cut a couple people down to size just by naming it.
“Where was that NYT article on whatevertheblah?”
“Here, LET ME GOOGLE THAT FOR YOU.”
Favorite new addiction: Twitter. I joined back in, when, June? after I realized that I was enjoying updating my Facebook status more than most consider normal. What started out as a 140-character challenge developed into something like a giant chat room in which incredibly silly and enjoyable conversations took place. Like this one, from September:
- me: reading an email and feeling like i’m being attacked by commas.
- kim: @smartgrrrl ,,, pew! pew! , , ,, ,, , pew! , ,,,
- me: @kpwerker I retaliate — – — blam! blam! — – — blam!
- me: working on configuring an EMP: 0))) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) )
- kim: Old skool: Arrows! -> –> -> -> –> —> –> -> ->
- me: en guard! ~~}=====>
More and more news sites and blogs are creating Twitter feeds, which means 2009 may see the death of Google Reader for me.
OK, maybe just a little bit of What I Learned About Myself This Year, because it’s significant for me and difficult to put into words — and when that happens I feel compelled to write it out: I keep wanting to write something like “I learned how to be patient/content/happy/awesome” but that’s not quite it. It is all those things, really, and I learned them in a sort of Zen way, where I just stopped . . . worrying, I guess. Which isn’t entirely true. I still worry a lot, I still get a little obsessed with things that I can’t really control, and I still get tense. But I also trust that things will sort themselves out as long as I work towards that. I can handle the stress and the worry better now because I’m happier with where I’m at right now.
And that’s it, really — that’s the big deal, the big new shift in perspective, the big Thing That I Learned How To Do This Year: I learned how to be comfortable with myself. Almost completely comfortable. Comfortable with what I want and don’t want, comfortable in my own skin. Comfortable when I’m out with people, comfortable when I’m alone.
I wouldn’t say I know myself completely — I’m still likely to lie to myself in order to justify some impetuousness or other, and quite possibly in the near future, but this right here, at age 37, is the closest I’ve ever come to knowing what I’m all about as I’ve ever come before.
And I’m ready for whatever’s next.
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