a recap of 365.

i have 3 modelos and a half a bottle of champagne in my fridge and neither of those sound all that appealing seeing as though i have enough holiday indulgence running through my veins to enable a reenactment of the fizzy-lifting-drink scene from willy wonka.

minus the old grandpa air-swimming the breast stroke next to me.

we did this whole calendar-turning thing a full year ago. apparently. although i think there’s a pretty good chance the government is behind some mass conspiracy to shave off a week or two (or ten) each year, every year, without us noticing. like mind control. or something. within the bat of an eyelash, we found 2010 on her back and it was time to turn the calendar again.

see, conspiracy.

2010 was, by some accounts, a tough one.

and also a great one.

and sometimes both at the very same time.

there's a lot of it i would write off.

and there's a lot of it i want to live in forever.

there was heartache. the hard kind. the kind that keeps you up at night and strips you down to almost nothing. there were questions asked and never answered. there was uncertainty and bullsh*t and vacancy and a slew of other things that just sucked.

and then there were all those other things that i would put on a permanent loop if i could.

those things i'm keeping.

the other things . . . i'm letting them go.

i welcomed some really great people into my world.

and i said goodbye to some really great people as well.

and that's part of the hard stuff. but it's life. and it happens. and it's okay.

it’s the good stuff of oh-ten that made it a year that i will file under thankyoucanihaveanotheroneplease.

the good stuff included dancing. and a lot of it. sometimes with curtains.

and it included singing. in the kitchen. as has been mentioned before. (sometimes with and sometimes without the assistance of headphones, despite the fact that i have a stereo system which has more speakers involved than i know what to do with or know how to disassemble. which will undoubtedly be a problem when i move.)

there was a lot of time spent in the company of puppies. and i can not emphasize more the importance of this. assuming you don’t have an allergic tendency to k-9s and you don’t occupy the same space as ones that have a relentless and unforgiving bite.

i came to the understanding (and not by myself. i had a lot of help with this one) that some of the best photo ops come from inside bathrooms.

and some of the other greatest moments happen inside the trunk of a car.

[unless, of course, you are in the trunk against your will and have found yourself taking part in some sort of unfortunate mafia solicited activity.]

i spent a tremendous amount of time near water. with my feet at the same level as my hips. which would suggest a reclined position. which is exactly what is supposed to happen when you are near water. unless you are surfing.

[i miss summer.]

 

i spent a good deal of time moving from one place to the other by means of public transportation. sometimes in uncharted cities. each time studying the accompanying strangers and pretending that i know exactly where they are going and why. this is one of my favorite things to do. you’d be surprised by how much you can learn about someone simply by watching them do nothing.

i spent a lot of time on film sets – sometimes in a cold studio in brooklyn, sometimes on the peak of a mountain in california -- redefining the meaning of a 20-hour work day, reaching new heights of stress and anxiety, playing peacekeeper and mediator between hundreds of people simultaneously, putting out fires i didn’t even know had erupted, fielding copious amounts of impossible and ridiculous demands . . . . . .  and never once forgetting that i have the best job in the world and i am incredibly lucky to be doing the one thing i always wanted to do.

i fell in love with new babies. and fell deeper in love with my friends who had them.

[meet miles and tripp. two of the most perfect things about twenty ten.]

i celebrated. a lot of things.

and i spent thirty-five of the best days of my life traveling across our little country and back again. all the while meeting some of those great new people, adventuring through some of those uncharted towns, creating those memories that will not soon (or ever) leave my photographic memory.

i faced some of my fears and kicked them in the teeth. repeatedly.

i was reminded, time and time again, that the people in my life were not put there by accident.

in life there are no accidents.

i spent the greater part of the year standing in the crossroads of fate.

and fate is a pretty great thing if you take the time to stop and appreciate it.

which I did.

changed. a little. no, actually a lot.

i knew this was going to happen. i asked for it. prayed for it, even.

a few posts down – and what seems like a lifetime ago – i wrote something about how my job is always forcing me to waltz myself into people’s lives, stranger’s lives . . . whether they like it or not.

since i left home, and watched the odometer tick from 278 miles to 3,899 miles (and counting. ohhh we are still counting), i have spent a pretty decent amount of time alone. mostly in the car. and in the hotel rooms. and occasionally at whatever joint i stumble into, always with a notebook in hand.

the notebook makes me look like i’m doing something. like i’m busy. like there is a reason i have the notebook and am semi-pathetically eating by myself.

which i don’t actually mind.

there are weirder things than eating in a restaurant alone.

and on a few stops, i have even managed to strike up a conversation with whoever is lucky enough to be seated next to the girl with the noteboook. who is eating alone.

on another stop or two, i actually made a friend.

but back to waltzing my way into stranger’s lives . . .

yesterday morning, i watched the sun rise over the red rock canyons of new mexico.

with cecilia.

cecilia is a Navajo chick with kind eyes, leathered skin, and a thousand years of wisdom.

i knew cecilia for about 12 hours.

i’ll probably never see her again.

but for 12 hours, she was my sidekick. we explored God’s paradise and corners of the earth that are not only mostly uninhabited, but rarely visited by the likes of us who choose popular and rather cliche haunts (i won’t name these spots. i don’t want to offend. but you know what i mean. and if you don’t, it’s really not that important) to vacation or simply pass through with a wide eye.

for 12 hours we swapped stories about life. stories about adventure. stories about which barista at starbucks she prefers best and why.

and then i was gone.

on my way to a new city, to meet new strangers, to waltz into new lives.

it leaves me a little sad. the knowing that i won’t likely see cecilia again. ever.

but it leaves me changed.

and better.

there are a lot of good people i have met throughout this journey.

they all have a story to tell me and they each come with a simple way of opening up my mind and my world. and even my soul.

definitely my soul.

most importantly my soul.

[sunrise over the red rocks. with cecilia. gallup, new mexico.]