Fin.

Driving home from celebrating my Mother-in-Law's birthday today*, I started to convince myself that yesterday was actually supposed to be my final post for the year. Which would have been great. It would make sense to end on that note. But, no, a quick calendar check brought me back to reality. It is today. Which is more fitting, as it completes a theme that has been recurrent over the last 364 days: I have absolutely nothing on my mind to write about.

I envisioned that, when this day eventually came, I would have some ground-breaking, grand finale of a post. But that would have required me to think ahead. Hmmm.

So, right now, I'm doing what I did many nights during my sentence: I'm just going to keep writing words, one in front of the next, until something happens. At this point, I warn you to proceed knowing that it might not.

In thinking about the past 12 months, it's a little surprising that this day is here. A year is a long time, but so much of what I am looking back on seems still so recent.

Like last summer's brush with death that endured long enough that it cannot be called a brush at all. More like, maybe, a pummeling. Of course, I wasn't even close to walking toward that bright light, but I didn't know that at the time.

Or how we ended up with the same number of cats in the house on day one as we did on day 365, but not without an unexpected shuffling of the cards that brought us both joy and deep sadness.

Then there was my unexplained, but thankfully temporary, obsession with both Lawrence Welk and the Masons. Not at the same time, at least.  

And, a lot of deep soul searching that led me to make some big changes. Some short lived, some still in the works, some achieved.

Writing every day for a year was a huge pain in the ass, and many times I cursed myself for making such a difficult commitment. But it forced me to experiment, it demanded me to think and think some more, and it required me to abide by an obligation. I did what I set out to do when I started this blog:

Eat.

Think.
 

And be daring.

And, write a lot of silliness in between, of course.

That's it. This is...

~The End~



*No, we did not choose her over my Dad on Father's Day; actually, my parents are in Iowa doing...you know what? I'm not certain what they're doing...hmmm...I never am.

The Best of My Love.

A couple of years ago, sometime around that year's end, a co-worker & I were discussing doing a "best of" post for our company's blog. She asked me to pick my favorites, but instead of doing that, I countered that we shouldn't list our favorites, we should list our readers' favorites. Otherwise, it would be too self-serving, I explained. Not one to ever win a disagreement with this person, I ended up giving her my favorites, but because I can be petty when I'm losing, I gave her a list of only my entries. In fairness, it was true.

Here I am at the penultimate (that word's for you, Ben!) post for this blog, and I've decided I should create my own "best of" post. As I only have 15 followers and a fraction of that of actual readers, there is little data for me to base any kind of readers' choice on, so they'll have to be mine. Here they are: 

1. On music: No Lifeboat Needed.
2. Creative writing exercise: Fallen.
3. Use of the F word: #%@&!.
4. Stupidest: a tie between Art is Fart and Don't Read This.<also an F word contender.
5. On food: Oh, Crap.
6. Most personal: I Will Never Know.
7. Attempt at sharing wisdom: Take My Advice.
8. Self reflection/improvement: Today is Tomorrow's Yesterday.
9. A little ranting: Look it Up.  
10. Promises, promises: Tough Love.

Huh, tomorrow is the last day... I think I'm gonna miss this...

Don't just be a friend. Be a friend.

One of the cool things about facebook is that you can know pretty much how all of your friends are doing, without ever picking up the phone or messaging them directly. (Man, do I hate talking on the phone...) This is especially nice for those friends whom you never would, but still like or know enough to care what they're up to these days. (On the flip side of that, a friend of mine and I refused for a long time to be facebook friends because we saw each other almost every day and wanted to actually talk about what's happening in our lives without knowing it already, in an almost weird telepathic kind of way. We gave in when she decided she wouldn't be seeing me or any of my coworkers with the same frequency anymore.)

Anyway, the downside of all this is that it's easy, when their news is scrolling past your eyes in a never ending feed, to forget to check in on those people you do care a lot about. My dear friend in Turkey is witnessing some crazy shit right now. But I know she is OK because she is updating all of us constantly with new posts. Whew, right?

Except she doesn't know that I am relieved that she is OK. She doesn't know that I've read every post and done my best to understand through the translation what is happening. She doesn't know that I click on every link of hers and everyone else's that have to do with the riots and chapulling going on in Istanbul's Taksim Square. Only I know that. And that was a thoughtless mistake on my part. I should have checked in. Not because I needed me to know, but because she did.

For those of you who want a synopsis of what's going on, here's a pretty informative article (sent to me by you know who...)

Üzgünüm. Seni sevdiğimi biliyorsun. 

Do-Over #2.

Last summer, on July 17, I wrote another post that I didn't want to share. Considering what I've shared since then, it seems pretty benign. But I was incredibly fragile at that time, and I know that the stress I was feeling was making me a little crazy. A lot crazy. Off the map crazy. Here it is, with only a couple of deletes. 

"I just arrived home with my new prescription and sat down to read the indications and cautions. Yes, the rash that I thought I had fought off is lingering on and this is the latest treatment in response to yet another, different diagnosis.

The problem is, having done my reading, I am now afraid to take this medication. Not only will I be on it for as many as 12 weeks, I also won’t know for quite awhile if it is working. And considering the record of accuracy so far, you might say I am losing my trust.

I would just try it anyway, but this drug has possible side effects. Some serious, some just troubling: like the potential loss of smell and taste that could be permanent. I quite like these two senses, and the fact that they are my two highest functioning makes me feel a certain attachment to them as my last connections with the world of experiences.

This probably sounds a little crazy, but I honestly can’t remember the last time I felt so anxious and panicked. I am so hyper-aware of how wrong I feel that I’m actually freaking out about freaking out."

That was pretty much it. It is difficult now to even remember what I was feeling at that time. Being nine months free of the condition (although not cured), I've forgotten what was like to be so ill and to have no one know why.

I do recall at one point telling Ben that I felt no joy in my life anymore. This made us both feel terrible, but for completely different reasons, I suspect. It took great effort and some much needed hope to become myself again. But, what it illuminated for me, and clearly, I am in danger of forgetting that, is that so many people suffer. They have illnesses that can't be cured or controlled. They must still find a way to live and appreciate the time and the moments they do have. And that's pretty humbling to think about.  
 

Trust Me.

What I've been thinking about over the last several days is how little I've been thinking about this NSA call collecting business. And my complacency is not because I am dim-witted, or too wrapped up in my daily trivialities (which, by the way, are strikingly few compared to the average person) to get it.

I might be guilty of naiveté, but, I really don't feel threatened or concerned by this at all. In my mind, I am an insignificant person whose private moments are just as I am: insignificant. It feels to me a bit silly that so many people are in an uproar over this. They strike me as having an incongruent measure of their own importance.

Whether we're important or not should not decide whether we have a right to privacy, I know. And just because they've been doing this for the last seven years and we've just now taken note of it doesn't make it any more right or wrong either.

Yet, still, I have felt for a long time, I suppose specifically since I started engaging with the digital age, that this is a consequence of our modern times. When we made the choice to engage in a web of practically unlimited interconnectedness, we surrendered, in my mind, our expectation that we could not be seen, known, heard, or tracked.

Note, I did not say our right, but our expectation. And those are two entirely different concepts. So, now, I ask: who are the ones being naive?    

Recycled.

At work, I've been writing about the same concepts for four and a half years, which greatly increases the risk of self plagiarizing. I've more than once actually written the same sentence, or, worse, an entire paragraph that is damn near verbatim of a piece I've already written.

I'm always kind of surprised when it happens, wondering how I could not remember that I've already extracted that thought. In defense, I do write a great deal of copy that never gets used, and it is hard to keep track of what does and what doesn't. It's really too bad that the brain doesn't have some sort of flush function. How great if I could just evacuate any used combination of words with the push of a button. (I'm thinking like one of those pneumatic vacuums they have for airplane toilets...)

Writing every day for this blog is no different. Most times I'm suspicious and have to google my own work when a cautionary flare goes off. But, tonight, I was feeling pretty sure that I had a point to make that I've not made yet in the past 360 days.

I would love to share that with you, but it's awfully late.

Maybe tomorrow.

I Like Love.

I've been listening to a lot of Bollywood music lately, and I've been hearing a specific word sung so frequently, I figured it must be a pretty important one in the Hindi language. The word is ishq. I never got around to looking it up until today, when I recalled that the Turkish word aşk means love. And I now know that ishq does, too. Duh. Not just an important word, but the ultimate word.

Being a bit of an etymology nerd, I was delighted to learn this from Wikipedia: 

"The word is derived from ‘ashiqah, a vine: the common belief is that when love takes its root in the heart of a lover, everything other than God is effaced."

I like that.

I also like that this word has its own wiki page, which should not be surprising. But, still, not every word in every language does. Just the special ones.