"So This is the New Year/ And I Don't Feel Any Different"

...But oddly enough I do (feel different). Despite that fact, the Death Cab For Cutie's song "The New Year" does capture the inevitable anti-climatic sentiments of the evening :

So this is the new year.
And i don't feel any different.
The clanking of crystal
Explosions off in the distance (in the distance).

So this is the new year
And I have no resolutions
For selfl assigned penance
For problems with easy solutions

So everybody put your best suit or dress on
Let's make believe that we are wealthy for just this once
Lighting firecrackers off on the front lawn
As thirty dialogues bleed into one

I wish the world was flat like the old days
Then i could travel just by folding a map
No more airplanes, or speedtrains, or freeways

But this New Year's Eve was a milestone for me, as the clock yelled "CUT" on my action-packed decade of "firsts." In those 10 years, I learned to drive, completed high school and college, left my teenage years to embark on "adulthood", had an art show, turned 21, learned to play the guitar, traveled the US, lived in Texas and Kentucky, studied abroad, lived abroad. Also, 9/11 happened, 2 wars, the Bush years, the Obama beginning; I got to vote twice for the president. Facebook and Myspace, the best TV shows came into existence, TV on DVD's, the internet and NETFLIX. The iPod and iTunes. And, thankfully, music and fashion came about that made me proud of my generation instead of wishing that I had lived through the 60's. And, I must note, as Gary reminded me, those 200(-) glasses will be retired until the year 3000. Instead, we will have to go with these:

Flashing back to 1999, I celebrated the new millennium at 14 years old with my best friend Celeste, drinking sparkling white grape juice and watching the ball drop. While others were partying like it was 1999 or worrying about Y2k and hoarding canned goods, I was overwhelmed with thoughts of my future New Year's Eves when I would possess a driver's license, be glitzed and glamoured and party like adults did in the movies.

And then those dreams were quite fulfilled in 2009 in Regensburg, Germany. Catharsis. Epiphany. Catharsis. The realisation filled my entire being while I was watching WWIII fireworks go off, I couldn't take it all in. All I could do was grin and give thanks, because the significance of my longitude and latitude was overwhelming and self-actualizing. My New Year's resolutions of the past decade could be summed as this: to travel the world and learn a language. After years of blood, sweat and tears, it happened. I was there. I am here.

Epiphanies are fleeting. And sometimes you work so hard for something, constantly focusing on it that once it arrives, you don't really enjoy the payoff...already focused on the next goal, the next resolution...always living fast. Like this:

This was me this past decade (Before).



This is me now in 2010 (After):

Now, like the Camper Ad above, all my pent-up, crowded confetti thoughts that have been living with me in the 2000's have been emptied. Contentment has arrived now that my decade-long resolution of coming to Europe has been resolved, because it took forever, and 95% of the days, I doubted it would come into existence. I feel freeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Freedom. It's a new look for me. Freedom. Nothing's better.


I just realized it...9 days too late. My New Year's Resolution is to reap what I sowed. Enjoy the fruition of my goals. Another way to say it is to:

And yet another Diesel slogan. Not too keen on the clothing, but who knew Diesel's advertisers managers spoke the language of my heart?












I love it, and it reminds me of the Royal in The Royal Tenenbaums, saying
"...but you can't raise boys to be scared of life. You got to brew some recklessness into them...I'm talking about putting a brick through the other guy's windshield. I'm talking about taking it out and chopping it up."


So, mentally switch to a montage video of me, doing "stupid" things, soundtracked to "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" with Gene Hackman, and you've got my next year ahead of you.

Peace out