Last Thoughts On 2008

Update: This was meant to be posted New Year's Eve, but apparently didn't make it out of the draft folder, which is unfortunate. In any event, a few days later, the sentiment remains the same.

Well, at long last, 2008 is wheezing it's last dreadful breaths. I touched a bit on 2008 in the post before my birthday, so I don't know that I feel any inclination to go back into any of that. Instead of recounting 2008 as an annotated list of best records, worst moments, and greatest blessings, I think that I will share a little ritual that a friend is engaging in this New Year's Eve.

Take two pieces of paper, and, on the first, write down a list of your mistakes of 2008 (Think you haven't made any? You have.); on the second piece of paper write out your goals for the coming year. The first piece of paper, this catalog of your mistakes and missteps, fold in half and cast into the ocean, a river, or a creek. Any body of water really; this is the act of releasing your errors and regrets, thus enabling you to move forward.

Now take the second piece of paper, the one that sets out what you hope to accomplish in the coming year, fold it in half, and set it alight. Let it burn to embers, and know that you have just ignited your goals, and created a metaphorical jumping off point for their accomplishment. You're free now to move into the New Year with a hand at your back, and without the hindrance of the past holding you back or bogging you down. January First may just be another date, another day on the calendar, but it is symbolic nonetheless. It can be the clean slate that so many of us want and need so badly; whatever you need to make the changes that you've been making excuses not to. Take it, run with it; it's a rare gift in a life full of debits.

Thus far, I can say that I am wholly satisfied with these last hours of 2008. I took the dog on a five mile hike into the mountains outside of Pasadena; following two and a half miles of switchbacks, and an eighteen hundred plus foot elevation gain, we ended at the ruins of a hotel that burned at the turn of the century. We looked out over the valley, a late afternoon marine layer settling in, and I thought about how wonderful it was to be alive, breathing and existing, regardless of how messy the transitory may become. This evening I spent with family; eating food, talking music, science, tv, and tech, and playing board games before we all watched the ball drop in NYC. If this last day of 2008 is any indication of the 2009 to come, I'm ready to welcome it and embrace what I have every intention of making into a wonderful year full of possibility and wonder.

Oh Hi There; How About Some More Reflection?

Sometimes endings are beginnings, and obviously the reverse is also true. Los Angeles is wonderful, and I'm beginning to understand that there are some things that I've left behind in Seattle that I will have to let go of to move forward. If I don't, and don't do so actively, I will be captured in some sort of awful stasis; unable to move forward, and equally unable to move backwards. In short, there are people and emotions that must be released in order to avoid stagnation. It's wonderful to have people in your life that you love, that you would lay down your life for, but it's not healthy to live your life for them. We've all been the one left behind, waving at the U-Haul as our friends journey into their own lives (and likely we've all driven a few U-Hauls), but it's not healthy or good to hold on too tightly. There are relationships that we have forged that will carry us through our entire lives. People we have met who will hold us up and inspire us, and we will do so in kind; however there are others who may have made significant impacts that we must allow to simply dissipate. We must allow them the freedom to continue their own journeys as freely as we travel ours without hindrance or expectation; it was great while it lasted, but these partings, these partings they are inevitable.

Everyone that you know, that I know, that we know, we will lose someday. We will lose some of them to circumstance, to distance, to death; but we will lose them all. You will bury your parents, your best friend, your partner; or they will bury you. It is an immutable and unavoidable fact of life. It is something that we can't escape. My heart breaks into a thousand pieces, just reflecting on all of it, but at the same time, it makes it all so ridiculously beautiful. We have each other for such a short time, and there's so much that can be taken and learned and held and be wondered at. It's okay to let go, as long as we are conscious of what it is that we held on to to begin with.

I hope that you're reading; all of you.

We'll All Have Our Bright Shiny Morning

What are we doing?
We're leaving.
Where are we going?
California.
We can't just get up and go to California.
Yes, we can.
We can't just walk away from our lives.
We don't have lives here. We're just stuck. We'll end up like everyone else, drunk and mean and miserable.
What'll we do?
Figure it out.
We're just gonna leave and go to California and figure it out?
Yeah, that's what we're gonna do.

--James Frey, excerpted from Bright Shiny Morning.

The above was, literally, the first thing that caught my eye when skimming through a copy of Bright Shiny Morning today. I was spending time with a friend, beginning the bittersweet process of saying my goodbyes, and she suggested that I add this to my reading list, as Los Angeles and her history are central characters. To say that it resonated would be, of course, something of an understatement. While the motivations for my own journey are far less dark, and much more an adventure and an exploration of myself than a mere running away, the end result is that yes, I am going to California to "figure it out".

Packing is almost complete, departure dates have been set, and there is an almost electric excitement about me. Often I have found myself critical of my reluctance to have adventures (though in truth, I've had my fair share), so perhaps this is also something of a test. There is something that I want, and have felt that I've needed for some time, and here it is, a door that merely needs to be walked through. Perhaps it's the ease with which everything fell together that leaves me a little nervous, but in truth, isn't serendipity to be celebrated?

Right now, with so much uncertainty in the world, let's focus on the beauty and the wonder of possibility; a belief that, in the end, everything really can be wonderful. Let's suspend for a moment, if we can, the concept of chance. Instead, let's believe, if only for just now, that everything is a puzzle, a gift to be used to our advantage in making us the people that we want to be. It's not that things are hard, it's that they're blessedly easy, if only we can step back and marvel at yes, the beauty and wonder of it all.