Phone It In Friday: What's new, Internets?

Happy Friday the 13th, you guys. Hopefully nothing crazy has happened to you. YET. Ooooooooooh, spooooooky.

Anyway. What's going to be different in 2012, Internets, now that you've said good-bye to 2011?

hopes, not resolutions

  I turn 30 this year, which isn't really that big of a deal except that I think it satisfies Abigail's love for even numbers. I have to say I prefer 30 to 29. I say that not having yet turned 30 but as a 29-year-old, I often forget how old I really am. For whatever reason, I've not been able to get past saying I'm 28. It's not fear over getting older, not at all, it's just that I have this block in my brain that doesn't allow me to notice that time is passing. Sometimes things slip past this block, things like my friends having babies or becoming an aunt or buying a house, but most of the time I drift through life with no idea how long I've been in the world.

I don't know what will be different this year, not really. I'd be scared to guess, which brings me to my hopes for the year, I suppose. I hope to be braver. I hope good things for me and I hope great things for my friends and family. I hope to write more and travel more and maybe write about traveling more. I hope to meet some of you I've not yet met. I hope to see some of you I HAVE met, but who I haven't seen in far too long. I hope to be more active but save plenty of time for (quality) TV-watching. I hope to make good, informed decisions about everything from my job to what to eat for dinner. I hope to see my family and friends more often, hang out with Joe whenever possible, take Max on lots of walks, and...I guess just leave Phoebe alone, since that's what she likes.

Mostly, though? I hope that I stop this crazy bullshit habit I have of typing all blog posts into a Gmail drafts. Why do I do that? Google Docs is RIGHT THERE. Blogger is RIGHT THERE. Why do I type posts in Gmail drafts and risk losing them to the accidentally-hit-Discard void? Because that's happened before. Oh, yes. It's happened. And like most of my problems, it's due to my own stupidity. So I guess I hope to have less of that this year. FINGERS CROSSED.

One more thing. I hope to celebrate more milestones, both big and small. Milestones like this one: The Collective began four years ago (give or take some days), which is basically a high school amount of time, and not a day goes by that I'm not thankful to have found all of you wonderfully strange people. I love you weirdos. Yay!

Out of the darkness, and into the fire.

The future is distressingly inscrutable and to my woe I've no knack for prediction. But this year began exactly as did last year, namely inauspiciously. And this year continues as last year, in that I still can't figure out how to write. So what is going to be different about 2012? I'm not buying any more goddamned houses, that's what.

we two have run about the slopes

I have preferences when it comes to numbers. Please be even. Be symmetrical. Be curvy.

2011 was not a great year, visually.

2012 just looks right.

2012 is even. It's nearly symmetrical. It's curvy. It's ripe. It's full of potential. It's making me nervous.

2012 is going to trample 2011:

New house. New office. New cities. Promises of new boys and new friends.

But mostly because this is the year I get a kitty to call my own.

the dragon's ire more fierce than fire

I heart beginnings, Hufflepuff through middles, and whimper over endings; so January always tests my loyalty. Do I mourn the old year limping away or cheer the new year with so many fresh start-overs? 2011 was the weirdest year of my whole entire life. It offered up such crushing defeats I can barely stand to glance at it in the rearview mirror. Actually, that's a really good theme for 2011: My inability to look in the mirror. 'Cause dayum, y'all, it doesn't feel so good to see your face after your worst suspicions about yourself have been confirmed. But there was a quiet hope about the thing too. I tripped into storytelling work, pedaled into sunsets, melted into love. I don't begrudge 2011 for the noggin knocks, but I'm not going to miss it either. The treasure I stumbled over is coming with me to 2012, and anyway "The Hobbit" and "The Dark Knight Rises" are on this side of the solstice.

Which sort of brings me to my point. I pulled a dusty copy of "The Hobbit" off my bookshelf just the other day and remembered why I love rereading things so much. It's fun to revisit worlds that enchanted me in my past, for sure. But also, if the book means the same thing to me as when I read it the first time, I haven't really grown. But if it tells me a different story, it means I'm really living. The first couple of times I tackled "The Hobbit" I was aching in my bones to go there and back again. "There" being anywhere, but mostly western Europe. And I did and it was wonderful and it molded me more than I can say. But this time when I read "The Hobbit" I kept clinging to the very first chapter: "This is a story of how a Baggins had an adventure, and found himself doing and saying things altogether unexpected. He may have lost his neighbours' respect, but he gained — well, you will see whether he gained anything in the end."

2011 for me was mostly about learning to stand in the Heather Anne-shaped space in the world and halt the perpetual apologies. Part of it is my protestant upbringing, part of it is the circumstances of my childhood, part of it is my southern heritage, and part of it is just an innate inability to purposely offend. But I realized last year that I had to stop saying "I'm sorry" to everyone and everything for simply existing in my natural form. I've pretty much spent my entire life contorting myself into the most apologetic shapes imaginable, trying to be the very thing that everyone needs. Non-threatening, non-confrontational, playing down my desires, my successes, the structure of my soul.

I have a deep faith in the common thread that ties humanity together, a firm belief in our responsibility to one another. I will crave an existence that binds up broken hearted people until the day I die. But also, in 2011, I realized I have a responsibility to myself too. To fully embrace the shape I make in the world.

That's going to be my 2012. Occupying my own personal space without remorse. I may lose my neighbours' respect, but I will gain — well, we'll see whether I gain anything in the end.