Making friends with winter.
A good production of a breathtaking play.
Getting set up, and going on some dates.
Falling in love with academia.
Lunches with Kathryn.
Social research, culture theory, senior capstone...
Radical feminism.
Meeting Sui and Noel.
Being awake for too many days in a row.
Swimming in Long Lake. In the Atlantic, in the Pacific, in Lake Michigan.
My only digital camera broke again.
This, again. (Thank you, anti-Pharma sentiments!)
Getting to know Niece-Baby.
Watching Xena.
My first full-time job, also the most grueling work of my life — street canvassing for two different non-profits.
Tofu scrambles.
"Hurricane" Irene.
For a few weeks at the end of the summer, traveling light and receiving enormous hospitality.
And seeing my freshman-year roommate again for the first time in three years.
Backaches.
Singing while I walk.
Semiotic ideology.
Gaining and losing my taste for alcohol.
Graduating.
___
Did I realize my intentions for the year? Yes. Especially my invitation to myself to have "more messes, more failures, more learning." More stretching. More experimenting. More biting the bullet.
The primary psychic ordeals, mostly voluntarily undertaken:
- I let my friend set me up with a mutual friend and Went On Dates, despite freaking awful anxiety and cognitive dissonance. I learned that I hate dating, independent of how much I may like the person.
- I went to the undergraduate version of summer camp (an institution I hate) in order to graduate on time. More anxiety (food-related and social). Triumphant in the end!
- I took a job that almost no one can do. AND KEPT IT
Oh, and I read fifty-five books. I made a list of the best.
1. 2k+ books? Insane. (In the best of ways.)
ReplyDelete2. Dating? I want to hear more-- mostly because I'm curious about these things. I've never dated before, either. What defines dating, anyway?
3. I realize I already commented on your 2011 intentions post once, yet I look back and I feel I'm reading it for the first time, and yes, that that is what I hope to do, year after year.
Reading your words on that post was like intense kindred spiriting.
"...I can keep friendships with new people at a superficial level almost indefinitely. But trust will never not be a risk, as long as people are imperfect—and when I do not trust enough, my friendships stagnate and I start to feel very lonely, and it's no good. Yet how to stop being afraid of the pain of being hurt by a friend? I suppose it's like any other emotional fear: If you wait to act until it's gone, you will never move, so you acknowledge it and then you make your way through it.
I am not going to let myself simply hold my ground this year."
Ah, I still feel this way. Almost all the time. Trying, doing my best.
I too, hate actually ~dating. ick.
ReplyDeletesui - And they're mostly ones I haven't read, mind you!
ReplyDeleteDating -- see email.
Yes, I think that part of the post, the relationship/social part, has definitely been the more difficult part for me. Which is scarier, trusting others or giving up perfectionism? Ha. (And how are they connected? Ooh...)
Ellie-beth - Haha, hurrah! It's not a good practice...I affirm our hating of it as quite valid.
Other people. Perfectionism, ourselves-- we can always control. Other people, and how much they love us, how they treat us... we can't.
ReplyDeletesui - Bam.
ReplyDelete