2019

New beginnings. Phew! I’m a sap for new beginnings. The first time you sharpen a pencil, the first page of a new journal or notebook, a new school year, a new semester, the beginning of a road trip, the beginning of a good book. It’s a wondrous feeling. I will turn any occasion, mundane or exceptional, into a chance to celebrate a new beginning.

However, like a sequel or a second season, new beginnings don’t have to be without anything to build on! Maybe that’s the irony, or the nonsense, of my love of new beginnings, that I get to continue onward. It’s like waking up every day. I get to keep going.

There were times in 2018 I didn’t want to keep going. There’s been times in every part and year of my adult life where I didn’t want to keep going. Life is hard. Fill in the blank with whatever. Because we all know, life is hard.

But I woke up on December 31st, and as is tradition, I run in the new year at midnight January 1. And then I went to sleep and I woke up again on January 1. And I get to keep going.

There seems to be a divide. Between the goal setters, the resolution types, and those who don’t set goals this time of year for the time ahead, and may even roll their eyes and scoff at the resolution types.

I’m sentimental, and I’m hopeful (here’s where probably some of my friends will get a good chuckle), and so I’ve most often been a resolution type, but I’m here to say that, as should be obvious, there’s no one right way to experience the passage of time.

In 2019 I want to hold on to good feelings. In 2019. Well, when I think about what I want to do in 2019 it starts to sound like the end of It’s Kind of a Funny Story. But that’s the beautiful, wonderful, fantastic, awful, ugly, horrid thing about that book. Ned Vizzini lived and ultimately died from depression and suicidal ideation. I know that when I feel anything, anything at all, that isn’t horrid, terrible, painful agony, depression and suicidal ideation, that I deserve and owe it to myself to chase those feelings. And I just watched the ending clip of It’s Kind of A Funny Story and I cried. And I’m not known as an easy crier.

I want to love my friends, and read comic books, and write, write, write. I want to sing in the shower and coffee and go for long walks. I want to listen to rock ’n’ roll music and go to class and talk about how I think it’s all a bunch of bullshit (I very often talk about how it’s all a bunch of bullshit). I want to get my Master’s degree, or at least try my damndest to. I want to read Lauren Graham’s new book and rewatch Gilmore Girls. I want to avoid participating in 2020 discourse while listening to all the podcasts because it’s grown into a true guilty pleasure.

I want to keep wrestling with academia, I’m not ready to give up on it yet. I want to watch the Lord of the Rings and cry every time Samwise gives his monologue.

If life, and especially the last 6 years have taught me anything, not everyone gets to keep going, some choose to leave, but many don’t. I spend too many days depressed and/or tired out of my wits to spend a single good day second guessing myself.

Nothing is easy, or simple. If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you have a bit of the deck stacked against you. And if I know you, I know you’ve found your ways of coping, and making it through and doing you’re best. That’s all we do, that’s all we can do.

Two songs that I find fitting as I start this year are “Just Fine” by Poor Jeremy and “I Hope You Dance” by Lee Ann Womack.

But again, I’m a sap. And I’m ok with that. Because there’s something mystical about listening to “I Hope You Dance” when you feel like you’re on top of the world. It’s infinitely better than listening to it when you feel like you’ve hit rock bottom and all you’ve been given is a shovel.

I’m going to end this post with one more video and a song.

David Foster Wallace’s “This Is Water” came to me one day when, ironically, I was at work, and I didn’t want to be there and I was barely paying attention. And since then, I find myself coming back to it from time to time. I think it’s worth at least a first listen.

I’ll let Wallace’s work speak for itself. And I’ll share my last song.

So… 2019… I’d say it’s for whatever you need it to be for. Whatever you make it for. 2019, like yesterday, today and tomorrow, is what you make of it. And I believe in you.