It's New Year's Eve - one more post before we kiss 2007 goodbye and ring in 2008 with style. The house is cleaned up, the guests won't arrive for a few hours, so I thought I'd get one last post in before the year is out. Last year, I declined to do a look back - it just wasn't what I wanted to do at the time. This year, thanks to the iMovie that Heidi made, I'm a bit more in the mood to look back. Parts of 2007 sucked beyond words, but the good times outnumbered the bad by a comfortable margin.
Here I am on December 31st, 2006, with my one real resolution for the year. As I've mentioned before, I am not much of a resolution kind of guy, but I felt like this was one that I really wanted to make.
Here I am on December 31st, 2006, with my one real resolution for the year. As I've mentioned before, I am not much of a resolution kind of guy, but I felt like this was one that I really wanted to make.
I also apparently resolved unknowingly to start wearing my hair longer - what a curly top!
I started 2007 with a firm resolve to stop hiding, to be more authentically me (because the authentic me really is fabulous), and to be braver. And for the most part, I think I really accomplished my goal. I took a lot of chances last year that might not have paid off, but for whatever reason, they did. They were not all big things - I didn't quit my job to join a Buddhist convent or anything like that, nor did I sell all my belongings to search for buried treasure - but I do believe that I had a year full of the unexpected, things that my 30 year-old self could never have done.
In so many ways, getting my ear pierced was a perfect metaphor for what I set out to accomplish the night that video was made. That act may not seem like a lot to people, but to me, it really is. It all stemmed from a suggestion by Heidi one night when we were out together sans kid and feeling the effects of one glass of wine too many and I couldn't stop thinking about doing it. I know that I hemmed and hawed in this very blog about it probably more than I should have, but in the end, I did it. Despite all my worries about how it would go over at work or with more conservative members of my family, the most common response to it has been "have you always had that and I'm just now noticing it?"
I've taken chances in relationships, stepping outside of my comfort zone in getting to know people with some very satisfying results. I've been more honest with myself and those around me, to varying degrees of success. I danced with reckless abandon in a gay bar. I have gotten braver in my blogging - sometimes I wonder how smart that is, but my unwritten rule is I don't blog anything that I wouldn't feel comfortable saying to anyone in person. I still am smart enough to know not to blog about work (blogging about work is not brave, it's naive.) While there will always be a lot of music posts around here because it is such an important thing in my life and really the prism through which so much of my life is refracted, I have also littered this last year's worth of blogging with a lot of personal stories and things that have made me hesitate prior to hitting PUBLISH. But I am who I am and I can't change any of it, nor would I really want to.
But perhaps the biggest thing that has happened this year is that, after many years of intellectually knowing it but not wanting to believe it, I have (much as my lovely wife has) come to the conclusion that not one single solitary person on this planet is capable of saving you besides YOU. I have spent a lot of time in my life looking for people to affirm this or that or the other thing and mostly, that's a fruitless endeavor. It's not fair to them and it's certainly not fair to me. And that's hard. It pisses me off for it puts a big roadblock up smack dab across the path of least resistance. It forces you to look at yourself and realize that really, there is no savior. You HAVE to do it yourself. So you get to have a fit and then once you're done with that, you get to the business at hand. And once you start, you realize it's not quite as bad as you expected, and that really, it is empowering.
I have a long way to go, that much is certain. But I think I've come a long way since New Year's Eve 2006. I'm a work in progress, after all! And while it 2007 was overall a pretty good year, I am haunted today by the Casey Stratton song "A Promise Made." I am not melancholy or sad today, mostly just mellow, but here is what keeps going through my head.
There will be happier days, I promise you
And there will be sun in the sky, I swear
And there will be happier days if you just hold on to the light.
My goal for 2008 is to really believe that. We'll see how I do. Stay tuned.
PS - Thanks to everyone in my life who has made 2007 a great year. I will not call you out individually as I will almost without a doubt leave someone out. But you know who you are. Thank you. Here's to a 2008 that blows the socks off of 2007.
I started 2007 with a firm resolve to stop hiding, to be more authentically me (because the authentic me really is fabulous), and to be braver. And for the most part, I think I really accomplished my goal. I took a lot of chances last year that might not have paid off, but for whatever reason, they did. They were not all big things - I didn't quit my job to join a Buddhist convent or anything like that, nor did I sell all my belongings to search for buried treasure - but I do believe that I had a year full of the unexpected, things that my 30 year-old self could never have done.
In so many ways, getting my ear pierced was a perfect metaphor for what I set out to accomplish the night that video was made. That act may not seem like a lot to people, but to me, it really is. It all stemmed from a suggestion by Heidi one night when we were out together sans kid and feeling the effects of one glass of wine too many and I couldn't stop thinking about doing it. I know that I hemmed and hawed in this very blog about it probably more than I should have, but in the end, I did it. Despite all my worries about how it would go over at work or with more conservative members of my family, the most common response to it has been "have you always had that and I'm just now noticing it?"
I've taken chances in relationships, stepping outside of my comfort zone in getting to know people with some very satisfying results. I've been more honest with myself and those around me, to varying degrees of success. I danced with reckless abandon in a gay bar. I have gotten braver in my blogging - sometimes I wonder how smart that is, but my unwritten rule is I don't blog anything that I wouldn't feel comfortable saying to anyone in person. I still am smart enough to know not to blog about work (blogging about work is not brave, it's naive.) While there will always be a lot of music posts around here because it is such an important thing in my life and really the prism through which so much of my life is refracted, I have also littered this last year's worth of blogging with a lot of personal stories and things that have made me hesitate prior to hitting PUBLISH. But I am who I am and I can't change any of it, nor would I really want to.
But perhaps the biggest thing that has happened this year is that, after many years of intellectually knowing it but not wanting to believe it, I have (much as my lovely wife has) come to the conclusion that not one single solitary person on this planet is capable of saving you besides YOU. I have spent a lot of time in my life looking for people to affirm this or that or the other thing and mostly, that's a fruitless endeavor. It's not fair to them and it's certainly not fair to me. And that's hard. It pisses me off for it puts a big roadblock up smack dab across the path of least resistance. It forces you to look at yourself and realize that really, there is no savior. You HAVE to do it yourself. So you get to have a fit and then once you're done with that, you get to the business at hand. And once you start, you realize it's not quite as bad as you expected, and that really, it is empowering.
I have a long way to go, that much is certain. But I think I've come a long way since New Year's Eve 2006. I'm a work in progress, after all! And while it 2007 was overall a pretty good year, I am haunted today by the Casey Stratton song "A Promise Made." I am not melancholy or sad today, mostly just mellow, but here is what keeps going through my head.
There will be happier days, I promise you
And there will be sun in the sky, I swear
And there will be happier days if you just hold on to the light.
My goal for 2008 is to really believe that. We'll see how I do. Stay tuned.
PS - Thanks to everyone in my life who has made 2007 a great year. I will not call you out individually as I will almost without a doubt leave someone out. But you know who you are. Thank you. Here's to a 2008 that blows the socks off of 2007.
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