Long-distance friendship and short-distance friendship are both very good and very different.
When dealing with immigration, there’s always a document you forgot, or a form you didn’t sign, or a paper you didn’t copy in triplicate. Just try to space out your heart attacks.
Vote! And, you know, give a damn about politics.
If you start living at home again, no matter how much you’ve changed in the fifteen years since you were a Cure-listening poetry-writing high school senior, you will become that seventeen-year-old again. You will probably still listen to the Cure and everything.
The Office, American version, is a really, really, really good show.
Pasta with broccoli, sundried tomatoes, garlic, and olives, is a very good backpacker-envy-inducing dinner to make yourself in a hostel.
Feminism is a really good idea.
When choosing a full-body extra-thick wetsuit, go up a size rather than down.
Change into yoga pants and wear fuzzy socks on trans-pacific flights.
If you are out late at night and you’ve missed the night bus and are wondering whether to sit around talking to and/or making out with someone extraordinarily dumb (if extraordinarily cute) or to spend fifteen dollars on a cab home: girl, please, TAKE THE CAB.
Good housemates are worth their weight in gold.
As are good family members. Especially good moms and good sisters and good cousins.
Whatever other awful mistakes you may have made in your ridiculous life, if you have a long list of people who call, email and text you when you have a breakup, you are probably doing something right.
Long nighttime walks in the semi-tropics are good for what ails you and are an excellent time to listen to groovy dance tunes.
Speaking of which: if you don’t use those dance muscles, YOU WILL LOSE THEM.
Similarly, your social skills will atrophy given a long enough bout of isolation and solitude.
Redemptive conversations are so possible.
Don’t start warming the oil for minestrone and then…just walk away from the pot. Everything will smell like smoke. Forever.
If you have a chance to swim with dolphins, climb a glacier, dive into really cold water, or anything else sort of random and expensive but really awesome and fun: do it!
Really belt it out in Rock Band.
Your reflections on what you learned in 2008 concerning your love life are perhaps best left to your paper journal.
How you live your day is how you live your life.
It’s a big planet but a small world.
Whatever it is, sooner or later, it’s going to change.
Let go let go let go let go let go let go let go let go let go let go.
Comments
3 responses to “What I Learned In 2008”
A thoughtful and thought provoking list, a good list. Happy New Year! Looking forwards to more entries and living in the Antipodes through you for another year (at least!).
Thank you for continuing to add to the quality of my life – you are an inspiration, probably to many more people than you even realize.
I’m looking forward to this year. Things are in process so that we might finally become parents after almost ten years of trying. It’s so good to feel hope for a change!
I’m sure this year will bring you many more adventures; I’ll be right here waiting to read all about them!
good lessons…happy new year. i have learned “move on” is a good one to follow “let go”!