2008

It's the last eight minutes of year.

This year I (in non-chronological order):

*lost my dog.
*Went to Vietnam.
*Graduated from journalism school.
*Spent three months "working for" a person who made me dread walking into the room every day and resolved to never be the person to make others feel like that or to spend any stretch of time in someone else's room who did.
*Did not exercise beyond travel-related walking.
*Ate a very strange, erratic, borderline-unhealthy diet.
*Had some significant problems with money.
*Told my ex-boyfriend I still loved him and meant it and walked through the fire of knowing it was pointless while tragically hoping that it wasn't but I needed to get it out of my system anyway.
*Had moments of extreme despair and worry over the state of my life and the potential state of my future.
*Was recognized for my work on some very nice levels, by people whose opinions matter to me.
*Sat on my grandmother's bed in her nursing home and told her that she was my best friend, that she was my heart, that I could never repay her for all that she has done for me, that there were not enough tears in the world for her.
*I met my old friends from high school because of the internet.
*Watched Barack Obama accept the Democratic presidential nomination from inside Invesco/Mile High Stadium in Denver, Colorado, a night that I will remember for my whole life. Indelible.
*Related: Sat on a media platform and watched 100,000 people in Virginia rock that state blue for Obama on Nov. 3, chilly, the night before the election, and therefore did for the first time see the intense localized power of change
*Made some wonderful friends in my graduate school program, whose lives and careers I'll follow for a long, long time.
*Read a post on stage at Blogher which was really cool but also extremely nervewracking.
*Did not settle into my own space in any way at all whatsoever.
*Lost my blog mojo, big time.

It was a hard, hard year. I did not feel joy, for the most part. I felt loss. I grieved for my grandmother, who is not yet gone but is barely holding on. I felt so incredibly passionless, in the human-meeting-human sense. I let go, BARELY, of the love of my life, the boy, resisting it and resenting it the entire time. Grieved intensely for my dog - the not-human love of my life - who died when I was in Vietnam. I miss him now. I will miss him always. I dealt with people who didn't get me, at home, and thousands of miles away. I was alternately wealthy in loan money and broke down to the wire.

I felt lost, pretty much, most of the time. I believed this degree was the right thing to do and within this experience I found some wonderful people and some pretty cool experiences. But within that experience I felt lost and alone. I felt, often, that this was another stopgap, a confusing thing. I kept coming back to Mike that in that experience I was vaguely whole and outside of it I never would be although that's an inherently stupid thing to think. I felt bad about myself for the things I thought about the woman who ran the Vietnam trip and about the news bureau person although in retrospect they feel entirely justified.

I loved the people of Vietnam. I loved the pictures I took there, even if not that many people saw them. I felt like I was swimming against a very angry tide. I kept coming home.

I don't know what 2009 holds. I have no idea. I guess I keep walking this path alone, for now, for the forseeable future. I see a whole lot more letting go. I go back to work. I'm happy to do that although I'm not very happy. I hope it's happy. I don't know whatever in the world I should do with another bad year. I don't have the strength in my heart or head for it.

All best.

Comments

[Kelsey]

If it's any consolation 2008 was a pretty shitty year for a whole bunch of folks. Of course this is 2009, so we should all cheer up.

On a side note...I was in Invesco field too! What a moment! I road tripped from Ohio with a buddy I hadn't seen in years.

[Jennifer Simpson]

hang in there... I keep typing all kinds of advice then hitting the backspace button. I got nothin' some years are just hard. we get through them, not over them and just hope that we learn something along the way. The path we ultimately walk alone (whether we know it or not).

I think 2009 is going to be a good year.

[joanna]

You have come so far in grounding yourself this year--change hurts, but not as much as refusing to change.