I made a pact with a friend on New Year's Eve that we were going to fill this year with new experiences. While I recognize that it was a really stupid pact (because aren't all experiences new, in a sense?), it ended up being a pretty fantastic year. When that same friend packed her bags smack dab in the middle of our fun-filled year and left on a jet plane to the west, I thought I would be crushed. But something entirely different happened - I saw that I could to anything. We sat on the edge of the East River, watched Manhattan light up in front of us and the Brooklyn bridge loom over us, and the realization flooded over me like a cold, fast rolling wave of river water: I can do anything. Anything. It smacked me in the face.
Sometimes I walk down the street during rush hour and take a moment to look at the people rushing beside me. All in black, carrying briefcases, looks of quiet concern and preparation on their faces as they lean forward towards their lives. So professional. So ambitious. And then every once and I while I realize that it's very possible that I am one of them too.
I made some changes this year. Hopefully they are for the best, hopefully they make me an more of a better, freer, loving person.
"'I have never felt more alive then I do right now!' she yelled... As we all stood in an empty predawn Times Square the size of eternity, with the dazzling blinking lights blazing above our heads and the whole beautiful world at our feet.
I've met some beautiful people and I've heard some astonishing stories, good and bad. I want to keep collecting these stories. The more you hear and see and feel, the more you begin to wonder about the people around you. The commuters in black rushing beside me in the mornings to get to their own offices and to deal with their own concerns: where did they come from?
I want 2014 to be just as wonderful. Because the biggest lesson I learned in 2013 is that life doesn't just happen to be fun and fullfulling and full of excitement and love and romance and drama. You make it that way.
So I'm going to work as hard as I can. I'm going to keep jumping at opportunities. I'm going to take a cab to Chelsea and try to cook an Indian recipe with a friend. We'll eat Ethiopian food. We'll participate in the art shows and we'll swim in waterfalls. We'll run down Broadway at dawn. We'll eat cupcakes. We'll hang out with Austrians and sing more Ukrainian birthday songs and eat more oysters. I'll hop on buses and trains and visit the people I love in faraway states like Vermont and Oregon.
Because half of the fun of all of this are these experiences. And the experiences happen because you make them happen. The rest of the fun? The the stories you hear from the people you are with and the new ones you make along the way.
And I'm going to keep soaking it all in.
Goodnight ya'll.
