27: The year in review

(Originally post 10/21/2009)
With my 28th birthday a week and a day away (don’t strain yourself doing the math, it’s Oct. 29) it’s time for my annual year in review. While most people tend to examine their year’s accomplishments and shortcomings around January 1, I always look from one birthday to the next.

I could write an essay about my big search for meaning these past 12 months, or my decision to have another baby,or my brushes with success and overwhelming failures.

I could do that, but I’ll be lucky if anyone—me included—even takes time to see the highlights of this year. So without further blah blah blah, here’s my list of some of the stuff I’ve picked up along the way as a 27 year old:

• Of all the people you might disappoint in this life, the worst is yourself.

•Sometimes there’s nothing like achieving a goal to make you realize you need to reevaluate your priorities. It’s okay to stand back and admit “I don’t want this anymore.”

•Nursery rhymes are terrifying. Seriously, Jack cracks his skull open, a baby falls from a tree, Peter pumpkin eater traps his wife in a gourd and a dish has an illicit affair with a spoon. What is this stuff?

•The more you are exposed to real tragedy, the more difficult it is to be sympathetic to minor inconvenience painted as tragedy. That said, to minimize every small pain that plagues a life is to deny a valid piece of the human experience, meaning, by saying “it could always be worse” nothing is ever allowed to feel bad, and sometimes pain is justified.

•Of all the things to be thankful for, forgettable days are high on my list. It’s the days that will forever divide your life into a before and after that are tough.

•There’s a thin line between being accommodating a being a doormat.

•The longer you’re with someone the less you actually see them. At this point Andy could grow a tail and I could sprout wings and I doubt either would notice for at least hours, if not days. That doesn’t mean that you stop finding each other attractive, only that the qualities of that attraction become deeper and less visible.

•No one should die alone.

•I knew I was worrying too much about feeding Kathryn a balanced diet when she referred to wanting more lunch meat as wanting “more protein.”

•From what I’ve heard, most people go through life thinking bad things won’t happen to them, in a “that happens to other people, not me” way. I, however, go through shocked when bad things happen to other people and NOT to me. My immediate reaction is always “I can’t believe it would happen to someone else, I always thought that would happen to me!” How screwed up is that?

•You get what you tolerate.

•Love is a choice you make again and again. It’s not always as easy as falling. Some days, it’s more like trying to fly. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep trying.

•Dear high school: I forgive you. Middle school: maybe next year.

•We need to help each other. The differences that we’ve had pounded into our consciousness for so long are not only divisive, they are weapons of mass distraction. We all love, we all hurt, we all want to keep our children safe, we are all temporary. The rest is just there to keep us from realizing how connected we really are.

•Horrible things happen to amazing people. What makes them amazing is their ability to find life beyond the shadow of that pain.

•All of my favorite stories fall into three categories: 1. Less-than-compelling plot with an amazing wordsmith propelling the story (ie; The Catcher in the Rye. Nothing happens in that book, but the way Sallinger tells the story of that nothing is phenomenal). 2. Amazing plot with an un-exceptional author (ie; The Twilight Saga. That story was so juicy it would have fought through being written like appliance instructions). 3. Great story, great author (ie; The Harry Potter series. Smart writer, captivating story).

•Despite what the magazines say, there is no unspoken war between working moms and stay-at-home moms. We’re all moms, and somehow the universal experience of getting pooped, peed and puked on overshadows issues of taxable income. Go figure.

•It isn’t always fair. In fact, it’s rarely fair. It just is. Make of that what you will.

•The odds against a thing happening don’t matter if you’re the 1 in a million.

•I am not defined but what I eat, what I read, what I watch or who I vote for, and I’m
finally past putting much stock in what other people think in regards to those things.

•I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but I have very few regrets and if given the chance to do it all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing.

•It all goes by so fast. Even the days that seem to drag on forever.

•We do what we have to do to survive, even when something seems so big it ought to make us lay down and die.

•I want to be liked. I’m okay with that. More than that though, I want to be honest, because otherwise being liked is nothing but shadow puppets anyway.

•I will never be beautiful like the women in magazines. I will stop making such a big deal about that because I have a daughter, and it would devastate me to see her try and live up to those same shallow and unrealistic expectations of beauty.

•I think I’ll always get downright giddy about birthdays. And I don’t care that the cool thing to do is to act nonchalant, I like making a big, doofy deal about it. Life is a gift, and I don’t take it lightly.

•It is possible to have a love/hate relationship with “Goodnight Moon.”

•I’ll never be a successful writer. Not in the sense of having a substantial audience or making real money or making any real change in the world. But In the past year I’ve written things that people have told me have eased their pain, made them laugh, made them cry or made them think. I have left some tangible piece of my heart written down for my daughter to have when I am gone, and have been able to earn enough money schilling my knowledge of AP style to put food on the table while being able to stay home with my child. I’ll never be a successful writer, but in some ways—some important ways—I’ve still found success. And those little comments of encouragement mean more to me than any of you will ever know.

•I will never stop grieving my dead pets. I will probably never be able to hear about someone else’s without crumpling into tears.

•Apparently I am a sucker for any story involving either A) vampires or B) someone with tremendous power whose only soft spot is for love. I have no clue what that is about me, but apparently that’s my thing.

•The meaning of life is to experience it. I think it’s that simple. The love, the loss, the need, the hurt, the pain, the thrill, the thrall, the laughs, the late night talks, the campfires, the exhaustion, the forgiving, the rage, the release and the redemption. Just take it all in, accept it for what it is and what you can learn, and move on. But what do I know? I’m only 27.