It’s time for my annual New Year’s reflection post again somehow. This is the first that’s not bookended by piles of snow taller than I am.
2015 was crammed too full. I got my wisdom teeth removed almost exactly a year ago, and I still haven’t fully recovered from it. I finished a draft of my book. I graduated from grad school. I organized a reading for my friends. I had two jobs that I loved. I moved home at the beggining of the summer, and then moved again at the end of it. I missed New York more than I ever thought I would. I spent the summer with two stress fractures and a hole in the cartilage of my knee, and I still felt better than I did the previous year. I biked half the perimeter of Manhattan, listened to blue grass in Brooklyn at 3:00am, and ate BBQ on rooftops in Harlem. I spent 8 months applying and getting rejected from more jobs than I care to count. I did so many interviews that they blur together. I finally got one. I moved to Tennessee for my first full-time teaching job. I moved into my first apartment of my own. I pulled off my first semester and convinced everyone that I knew what I was doing. I spent more time with 48 15-year-olds than I did with anyone else. I flew on 7 planes (my 86th – 92nd), rode on 10 buses, spent 44 nights in hotels and other people’s houses in 11 states, and drove 6,500 miles. I saw my friends get published and act in plays and make movies. I hosted some dinner parties. I got paid to publish something for the first time. I saw Boston with snow drift-mountains, Providence in a blizzard, DC during the cherry blossom festival, and the Smoky Mountains with fall colors. I visited old friends, said goodbye to a lot of people, and met even more new ones. I only read 46 books and felt sad about it. I wrote less than I wanted to. I started paying student loans. I put the deposit on my future dog. I turned 26. For the last essay of my semester exam, I asked my students to write about the most important thing they learned this semester, inside or outside the classroom. 16 of the 48 wrote that they’ve become better writers, and 8 wrote that I taught them the importance of kindness. And though I suspect that 80% of them wrote those because they thought I’d give them a better grade, it still made me feel like I’d done something right.
I’ve started off 2016 with my first sip of coffee in like two years (I survived it), as much reading-for-fun as I could cram in, new socks, dark chocolate, and some diligent Shakespeare research. I get my new dog at the end of the month. I have so many things to be grateful for.
