Hi, you. It's been a while.
There are a lot of posts I meant to write over the past year, but for the first time, I didn't have the words for anything that was truly important.
In the beginning, I wanted to write about how tired I was, how overwhelmed, how there was too much, far too much, too fast, that I couldn't handle it. The leaving, the end of college with the best term ever, a three-month high that has ruined me for the rest of life. In a way, I'm glad I pulled a Rachel, that I didn't realize that it was actually happening until it had already happened - I have all the time in the world to miss it and mope, now. I'm glad I just focused on living it, then.
Then I didn't want to write, because there was so much that my brain was pushed into some kind of stasis, just floating around doing what needed to be done, without really processing any of it. Pack up five years of college while cramming every memory, every experience into a few weeks? Okay. Write thousands of coherent words analysing complex legal principles on little sleep and even lesser time? Sure. Pack again to prepare for five months abroad with none of your closest friends, and weather you've never experienced before? Cool. Navigate family, friends, finances and the feeling of being pulled apart into each individual atom that makes up your whole? No problem.
Then, I was just grateful. My brain was still in shock, but it was a good kind of shock. The packing, the papers, the pulling apart, it was all over, and it was so cold that I really couldn't feel anything but wonder. I was bundled up and heading out for a bite to eat, and there was a building with a window, across the street, and through it, the glimpse of an old couple learning to dance. There had been so much bullshit, logistical and emotional, in the months leading up to Zurich, that I had forgotten what I had been fighting so hard for. That moment, standing there, in my gloves and my boots, my beanie and my scarf, watching them learn to twirl - I remembered. And I wanted to write again, but how in the world could I find the words to capture that?
And then I was in a daze, whirling about locations that had seemed unreal in books, let alone all around me. If I had a lifetime, I still don't think I'd able to absorb those four months and twenty days, and if I had written then, it would just be a list of names of places, woven with a sense of gratitude too powerful for paper.
Then it was June 20, and it was my Mali getting married, the geeky airhead who flunked Computers and then aced it, equal parts Meg Cabot and civil engineering. I had my babes on one side and beaches on the other, and the words just got lost somewhere between the makeup and the high drama.
Things kind of dipped downhill then for a bit, like the world had stalled all awfulness for the first six months but just couldn't hold it anymore. The floodgates opened, and I was drowning. I don't do well with new situations, and this was a hell of a lot of new - a new job and a new city and a new house and new people - a new phase of life, forcing itself on me when I wasn't quite done clinging to the old one. The words I wrote then weren't blogposts, but lifelines to myself, words of survival, harsh and secret and unpoetic.
The last few months of 2017 were also spent in a daze, though if my time in Zurich was so fairytale that I couldn't wrap my head around how it was actually real, Mumbai was so real that I feared I'd forget to dream.
And then it was over.
A part of me wishes I could break 2017 up into teeny tiny pieces, and live a part of it each year for the rest of my life. It seems to be the only way to fully appreciate a year in which there was just too much, good and bad, but almost never simply unremarkable. But time, haughty bitch, listens to no emo millennials - she flows and flows and flows, and I suppose I'll just have to try to keep up.
Which leads me to one of my three resolutions for this year - to reinstate the favourites lists. If there was ever an anchor in my life, it was that monthly reflection of good things, and if there is ever a time I've needed an anchor, it is now.
The other two resolutions are more mundane, though far more ambitious - buy no clothes, and drink not more than once a month, in any quantity.
Ambitious as they are for someone like me, I hope these resolutions will cumulatively lead to a quieter, sparser, more contemplative 2018, to a year where I can absorb where I am and what I have, determine what I want and where I want to go.
At the very least, I hope they'll lead to a bigger bank balance and a healthier liver.
Have a happy new year, you guys.
~Sam
There are a lot of posts I meant to write over the past year, but for the first time, I didn't have the words for anything that was truly important.
In the beginning, I wanted to write about how tired I was, how overwhelmed, how there was too much, far too much, too fast, that I couldn't handle it. The leaving, the end of college with the best term ever, a three-month high that has ruined me for the rest of life. In a way, I'm glad I pulled a Rachel, that I didn't realize that it was actually happening until it had already happened - I have all the time in the world to miss it and mope, now. I'm glad I just focused on living it, then.
Then I didn't want to write, because there was so much that my brain was pushed into some kind of stasis, just floating around doing what needed to be done, without really processing any of it. Pack up five years of college while cramming every memory, every experience into a few weeks? Okay. Write thousands of coherent words analysing complex legal principles on little sleep and even lesser time? Sure. Pack again to prepare for five months abroad with none of your closest friends, and weather you've never experienced before? Cool. Navigate family, friends, finances and the feeling of being pulled apart into each individual atom that makes up your whole? No problem.
Then, I was just grateful. My brain was still in shock, but it was a good kind of shock. The packing, the papers, the pulling apart, it was all over, and it was so cold that I really couldn't feel anything but wonder. I was bundled up and heading out for a bite to eat, and there was a building with a window, across the street, and through it, the glimpse of an old couple learning to dance. There had been so much bullshit, logistical and emotional, in the months leading up to Zurich, that I had forgotten what I had been fighting so hard for. That moment, standing there, in my gloves and my boots, my beanie and my scarf, watching them learn to twirl - I remembered. And I wanted to write again, but how in the world could I find the words to capture that?
And then I was in a daze, whirling about locations that had seemed unreal in books, let alone all around me. If I had a lifetime, I still don't think I'd able to absorb those four months and twenty days, and if I had written then, it would just be a list of names of places, woven with a sense of gratitude too powerful for paper.
Then it was June 20, and it was my Mali getting married, the geeky airhead who flunked Computers and then aced it, equal parts Meg Cabot and civil engineering. I had my babes on one side and beaches on the other, and the words just got lost somewhere between the makeup and the high drama.
Things kind of dipped downhill then for a bit, like the world had stalled all awfulness for the first six months but just couldn't hold it anymore. The floodgates opened, and I was drowning. I don't do well with new situations, and this was a hell of a lot of new - a new job and a new city and a new house and new people - a new phase of life, forcing itself on me when I wasn't quite done clinging to the old one. The words I wrote then weren't blogposts, but lifelines to myself, words of survival, harsh and secret and unpoetic.
The last few months of 2017 were also spent in a daze, though if my time in Zurich was so fairytale that I couldn't wrap my head around how it was actually real, Mumbai was so real that I feared I'd forget to dream.
And then it was over.
A part of me wishes I could break 2017 up into teeny tiny pieces, and live a part of it each year for the rest of my life. It seems to be the only way to fully appreciate a year in which there was just too much, good and bad, but almost never simply unremarkable. But time, haughty bitch, listens to no emo millennials - she flows and flows and flows, and I suppose I'll just have to try to keep up.
Which leads me to one of my three resolutions for this year - to reinstate the favourites lists. If there was ever an anchor in my life, it was that monthly reflection of good things, and if there is ever a time I've needed an anchor, it is now.
The other two resolutions are more mundane, though far more ambitious - buy no clothes, and drink not more than once a month, in any quantity.
Ambitious as they are for someone like me, I hope these resolutions will cumulatively lead to a quieter, sparser, more contemplative 2018, to a year where I can absorb where I am and what I have, determine what I want and where I want to go.
At the very least, I hope they'll lead to a bigger bank balance and a healthier liver.
Have a happy new year, you guys.
~Sam
