The Real, Actual, Incredible, Ultimate, Last, Final Post of the Year

I've been back home for a few days now, and I still face a tower of homework for the next two days before I return to school again. As odd and ill-fitting as it seems, I feel as if I'm doing good, hard labor, like clearing out trees or grinding concrete. It's primarily a clean feeling, because I know that doing my homework well and relatively early is a Good thing to do, much like brushing twice a day or holding the door for someone. Still, I can't say I'm exactly looking forward to the homework ahead of me that requires a lot of thinking. I am, however looking backward.

It starts, I suppose, with how swimmingly the first half of my break went. I have rarely enjoyed spending family time this much, but that probably had as much to do with family as with ample alone time with things of interest to do. The weekend at my (grown) cousin's house gave me a hint of what extended family living might be like, and it was great--to a point. I took advantage of hours of play time with the most adorable three year old I know, but living with so many people gets uncomfortable after a while, mentally. I started to get more and more irritable, so it was welcome when we packed up and headed to my brother's apartment. Of course, I failed to foresee the fact that we'd be bringing my mom's sister and her husband with us; I, the ever-irritated one, began to resent their presence a little. However, coming perhaps out of that specifically, I felt much closer to my mom and my brother, most of all my brother. This past week and a half, I have been forced to realize how much I really do miss my brother. And once I came to this realization, the train backwards didn't stop.

One of the greatest pleasures I get from music is somehow finding a song, especially from the '90s or early 2000s, that I recognize by ear but know nothing else about. This happened several times while I listened to Third Eye Blind's albums for the first time. I'm not sure what exactly it is that affects me so strongly about reminders from my adolescence and childhood. I think that it has something to do with the fact that I spent much of my sentient '90s focused on what I missed because of my relatively strict, somewhat oppressive parents. Then, as now, I yearned for some sort of freedom from their rules, most of all, as always, in relation to girls. You see, when I was younger, I constantly fell madly in love. It was somewhat of a cruel affair, especially given the aforementioned parental situation. In retrospect, however, I suppose that my powerful passions might have been in some way a result of the rules of my parents. Fearing the wrath of my parents at relationships with girls gave me a wonderful wall to hide behind. I justified my shyness with necessity and spun mental tales of love with abandon. Every time I hear a song from that era that I knew, I am transported back to the pleather seats of an obtuse yellow school bus, head against the window, feeling the pain of the metal fasteners at every bump, daydreaming--not idly, but with utmost intensity--about not necessarily a girl, but the new me that would necessarily emerge from such an open personality. I constantly rewrote plotlines of books and movies to include me. I was always the patient, thoughtful friend of the female lead, who was generally a very pretty tomboy. We were always best friends until somehow we knew we were in love. I see now that I probably didn't really understand any of this complex dynamic. I had figured that it would happen of its own, and that it didn't really matter because I couldn't participate in anything like that now. Still, years later, every single time I hear "Inside Out" by Eve 6 or "Jumper" by Third Eye Blind or especially "Kiss Me" by Sixpence None the Richer, I go back and I rewrite, I revise my childhood as I think it should have, could have been. To me, the '90s should have been lived in exactly as Third Eye Blind sounds, if that makes any sense, with a particular mix of carefree-ness and import, a sense of destiny but the time and opportunity to while away hours laughing, joking, Hanging Out with my friends, male and female.

I think the '90s and their music mean so much to me especially because I didn't really live them in the sense I'm living these years now. I surprise myself by finding so much meaning in the past, especially in such a decade. I find myself wishing that the songs that evoke nostalgia for me now actually came out around when I graduate from high school (tricky tense problems there), because I feel a much stronger attachment to them as pop music that was popular and musically good. It seems right that my most nostalgic years should be my high school ones, right? And maybe that will be so down the road, but right now, those glorious, sunny, completely self-fabricated '90s have my number.

So what am I doing reminiscing about the '90s on the eve of 2008? It all comes down to this. I needed to look backward ten years so that I could see back just one year. Disregard the stilting, contrived pabulum I wrote below. Here is the truth: I don't know exactly what being mature or what being an adult means, but I know that I moved closer to it in 2007 than in any other year. I underwent trials by fire, pushing through situations I had no business being in, somehow managing to emerge more or less okay. And yes, I am grateful that I am more mature, that I am more equipped to deal with life, that I might be a tiny bit wiser. But goddamnit, I don't know if I want to grow up. I strongly suspect that what I really want is to revisit the '90s as I am now and taste the sweet fruit of an idyllic teenage life. That's a little bit dangerous, isn't it?

Happy New Year

The Year in Review

As I type, on the 38th floor of an apartment building on the northwest corner of Millennium Park in Chicago, I glance out the window and see, to my great surprise, a strangely affecting skyline. Only at this moment do I realize, overwhelmed by unexpected beauty, that life is indeed good and that the year is approaching its end. January seems now like an incredibly artificial time for the new year to begin, hastily thrown in among the snow-burdened trees and ice-crusted grass. Perhaps this is done to encourage the new season of life to come earlier. At any rate, now is as good a time as any to digest the past year, which I hope to do over the next couple of days, while I should be working on my gigantic mass of homework. The easiest thing, however trite, to do would be to make lists of good things and bad things.

Good Things:
I fell in love with Stasia
I met Kristen at camp
I made 1st Team All-State for Scholastic Bowl as a sophomore
I aced the PSAT again
I got my license and experienced the relative freedom of driving myself
I played almost every minute of quite a few of our soccer games
I achieved my greatest ever level of endurance and fitness
I ran in my first track meet and actually beat people
I had a fantastic trip to India
I won $1500 in scholarships for winning a vocab bee and getting second place in an essay contest
I learned more about people I had technically known for a long time, but never took the opportunity to really talk to
I was forced to realize how much what I have chosen to spend my time on really means
I'm one year closer to college and, hopefully, concomitant freedom
I think I'm beginning to find a voice in writing
I had my most technically prolific year (literarily-speaking, if that is a legitimate phrase)
I finally have a class with Mr. Longhenry

Bad Things:
I helped screw things up with Stasia
Stasia moved away
Some of my best friendships are with people in three different states other than Illinois
My car got totaled
I have become relatively close, or friendly, with so many people that I cannot divide my time well enough between all of them and my other commitments
I was forced to admit that I could not fit in everything I wanted into my life's schedule
I'm one year farther from childhood
I have such little time to exercise my creative voice
I don't have a class with Mrs. Longhenry
I was terribly irritable with my parents