Time

Time is a funny thing.  It is elastic, like a rubber band, so the same length of it can feel very long or very short.  Seconds can grind slow as hours if you are giving a presentation in front of a class, but you can sit down to talk with a friend you have not seen in far too long, and find the hours flying by like seconds.

So whether this was a long year or a short year, I cannot say.  A year ago today I was on a airplane to Germany, somehow convinced I was going to have the time of my life, despite the frightful doubts in my head that I was in completely the wrong place.  Empty lonely hours stretched long in the Scheissburg, but back at school my life was carried away by a whirlwind until I finally took it back by force.  Then stood staring, wondering what to do with it.

One year ago today I took to the air and I still cannot say if I have landed safely. 

There was a lot this year.  I hit the low point of my life, and pray to whatever gods may be that I never go there again.  I have discovered I am not who I thought I was, and though I no longer have the adolescent urgency to figure it out, I am looking down a lifelong road through self-discovery.

This was a year of redefining - redefining of relationships, goals, desires.  And though I don't feel like I have any more answers than when I started, what I have is, I think, enough to carry me through 2012.

These were my goals for 2011:

1.  To no longer be afraid of things that won't kill me.
2.  To stop making things my problems that aren't.

I think I did okay on those.  Certainly not going to leave them behind, but I think I need some new ones for 2012.

1.  Take control of my own life.
2.  Make new friends and take care of the ones I have.
3.  Show someone a story (a real one, one that matters).  Shouldn't be a problem if no one bugs me about it.
4.  Actually learn to play something on the guitar.
5.  Redefine my relationship with my body.

If you know me and don't know what #5 means, don't ask.  I'll tell you in my own time.

(Why do I post things I don't want to talk about?  I guess I feel more comfortable writing than talking sometimes.  It makes me uncomfortable to talk about the things I blog about, which is why I blog about them instead of talking - like they are still being expressed, more than in a private diary, but I don't have to say anything, and I don't get immediate responses.  Things I need to say but can't.  I forget sometimes that real people I know read this.  Like it doesn't exist in the spoken reality.  Ah well.)