Picture via / artsandcrafts.
I really like this picture. There’s something identifiable about it, and something that’s beautiful in that. Something gorgeous and enviable.
Having written that, I think I’m going to ramble a bit. I’m tired and I don’t think this will make sense. I’m glad that 2011 is coming to an end. I’m glad that it took me until near the middle of December to realize how tired and out of sorts I am. Do you really have the blues if it took you this long to realize that you did? I don’t know.
Today I listened to a song for the first time and I started crying. It was this song.
I want to say that 2011 was a good year, at least for me, because I had some good times and met some good people and some wonderfully weird people and had some great experiences, learned some new things, and reached new wild and amazing plateaus and what have you, but I think if you look a lot of the things that happened in my life this year I can’t really put 2011 in the win column. But I did try so hard.
Anyway. It’s all coming to an end and I’m thankful for that. Life is in the living and excitement is in the doing and I did as much of that as I could but I think I spent more of this year holding hands and accommodating and comforting others. I spent a lot of time (I say “a lot” here and by that I mean “not that often, not really”) looking into the lines of other people’s faces and searching the lonely maps of their eyes whenever they asked me “How are you doing?” or “Are you okay?” Thinking back on it, I must’ve given them a look like I was translating their foreign language into a more common tongue, but really I was trying to gauge what kind of answer they really wanted.
Just a friendly piece of advice: It’s a dangerous path to be on when far too often your time is being spent being told or made to believe that other people’s shit and their desires and needs are vastly more important than your own. Especially when it’s not. I’m not saying that you should live your life with your head up your own ass, far from it, but wherever you find yourself you should be appreciating the view with a little clarity. And some sense of your own self worth.
I think I also spent a good deal of this year assuming things. The word “assuming” is dangerous because just the use of it alone makes you assume that it, the assumption in question, was a false assumption. Facts aren’t everything but they’re better than assumptions. I’m not going to make the usual pun here, but you’re thinking and I’m thinking it and that’s something we can share. But anyway, I spent too much of this year assuming things, about others, about myself, about having more time to do things that mattered, about the things that actually mattered, about the level to which people believed in me and roughly how much it corresponded to how much I believed in them. Unrelated, I think I believe in others too much, which is so weird to say now because I don’t really. I used to think that I understand people better than others do, and that’s why I don’t put much faith in them, and thus don’t assume they’ll live up to hollow expectations that I hold concerning them. Perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps I’m not.
That said, I mourn the outcome of how a lot of 2011 ended up looking like for me, but I’m identifying the good parts, the little moments that mattered, the times that I was lucky to share with those who are important to me, and I hope all this little, crucial things will make the journey into the next year with me. Optimism is more exciting than any of the alternatives.
But I suspect that the metaphorical trigger shall be pulled soon, Santa will come, it’ll get colder outside and inside, the ball will drop, and a new day will dawn. The metaphors will get more mixed. Speaking of which, my mental impression of this past year, condensed into one silly metaphorical image in my head is simply of me saying “Fiat lux” in an empty, darkened room and for a few lingering moments I feel like the old magic will work and everything will be illuminated. The penny hangs in the air, then the penny drops. Time moves on, the lights don’t, the world doesn’t stop turning.
I’m wandering, talking nonsense, surprising myself. I miss doing that on the internet. I’m looking at this picture I’m about to reblog and I’m reminded that storms come all the time. And they don’t stick around forever. Sometimes it’s okay to sit in that darkened room by yourself after you’ve realized that the old incantations don’t work. It’s as good as time as any to think and dream up the next version of yourself, right?
