The Twentyseventh Letter
Okay. 2010 is over. Sometimes a year flies by, but this one, it truly earned every day, and one year ago feels so far away.
A year ago I was preparing my application for graduate school here in Sweden. I watched the sunset at the beach in Santa Monica on New Year's Day.
Now I'm done with one semester, finished the holidays, and am getting ready for the next term. And today I shuffled through the snow past a nearly 1000 year old cathedral.
There was so much in between that it's hard to really grasp.
****
I watched silver confetti fall from a desert night sky onto a crowd of at least 40,000 people as Tiësto spun his anthemic tunes.
Some of my favorite girls and I went to Vegas and lit up that desert night sky.
I was sick for many many weeks and watched a lot of Winter Olympics.
One day in May I got to work and saw an email, a day earlier than expected, telling me I'd been accepted to school in Sweden. I got tears in my eyes in front of my teenage client so she was the first person I told and she gave me a hug and jumped up and down for me.
Around 20 friends and I spent 4 days on a gorgeous lake, wakeboarding under a hot sun by day and having dance parties and guitar singalongs under the stars by night.
I went to Uganda. And Dubai on the way there and back.
I attended my ten year high school reunion.
As I packed up my life in Santa Barbara and said goodbye to most of my dearest friends and my ten years there, I cried harder than I can remember crying in a long time. Then I drove away... to San Francisco to fly to Sweden...and a few minutes later, the tears stopped. I was about to start one of my biggest adventures yet. I laughed.
So I became a masters student. Had my brains torn out and had to pick up the pieces and arrange them back in what I hope is the right order. A better order.
In finally reaching Africa and Scandinavia, I've seen some of the most foreign sights of my life. Sights maybe I've seen in photos, but before being there, never imagined the peculiar grandeur of them, as I could for so many other scenes and places I've seen abroad. The Ugandan savannah, stretching further than the eye could see. The Nile River, powerfully pounding over a waterfall and washing over my feet. Stepping off an island in Stockholm and onto a frozen Baltic Sea, an endless platform of ice covered in snow, quietly and impressively reaching out to the horizon. I'd heard that seas can freeze... I just could never really picture it. Or imagine playing ice hockey on it. It was bizarre.
I've spent a fall and first part of winter dancing, singing, reading, debating, adjusting, befriending, observing, writing...There have been highlights of course, and I think I've shared a couple of those with you.
****
And I've learned that it's not too hard to love something you hoped you'd love. You see the signs that it could be right, though you're only able to tell from afar. Then you get there... to a program. A country. A city. And because you hoped you would, and you read your intuition right, the positive far outweighs any negative, and there you have it. I learned this lesson before but didn't grasp it until this year. The end of this year, as I thought back on it. And that's my December Lesson for you.
A year ago I was preparing my application for graduate school here in Sweden. I watched the sunset at the beach in Santa Monica on New Year's Day.
Now I'm done with one semester, finished the holidays, and am getting ready for the next term. And today I shuffled through the snow past a nearly 1000 year old cathedral.
There was so much in between that it's hard to really grasp.
****
I watched silver confetti fall from a desert night sky onto a crowd of at least 40,000 people as Tiësto spun his anthemic tunes.
Some of my favorite girls and I went to Vegas and lit up that desert night sky.
I was sick for many many weeks and watched a lot of Winter Olympics.
One day in May I got to work and saw an email, a day earlier than expected, telling me I'd been accepted to school in Sweden. I got tears in my eyes in front of my teenage client so she was the first person I told and she gave me a hug and jumped up and down for me.
Around 20 friends and I spent 4 days on a gorgeous lake, wakeboarding under a hot sun by day and having dance parties and guitar singalongs under the stars by night.
I went to Uganda. And Dubai on the way there and back.
I attended my ten year high school reunion.
As I packed up my life in Santa Barbara and said goodbye to most of my dearest friends and my ten years there, I cried harder than I can remember crying in a long time. Then I drove away... to San Francisco to fly to Sweden...and a few minutes later, the tears stopped. I was about to start one of my biggest adventures yet. I laughed.
So I became a masters student. Had my brains torn out and had to pick up the pieces and arrange them back in what I hope is the right order. A better order.
In finally reaching Africa and Scandinavia, I've seen some of the most foreign sights of my life. Sights maybe I've seen in photos, but before being there, never imagined the peculiar grandeur of them, as I could for so many other scenes and places I've seen abroad. The Ugandan savannah, stretching further than the eye could see. The Nile River, powerfully pounding over a waterfall and washing over my feet. Stepping off an island in Stockholm and onto a frozen Baltic Sea, an endless platform of ice covered in snow, quietly and impressively reaching out to the horizon. I'd heard that seas can freeze... I just could never really picture it. Or imagine playing ice hockey on it. It was bizarre.
I've spent a fall and first part of winter dancing, singing, reading, debating, adjusting, befriending, observing, writing...There have been highlights of course, and I think I've shared a couple of those with you.
****
And I've learned that it's not too hard to love something you hoped you'd love. You see the signs that it could be right, though you're only able to tell from afar. Then you get there... to a program. A country. A city. And because you hoped you would, and you read your intuition right, the positive far outweighs any negative, and there you have it. I learned this lesson before but didn't grasp it until this year. The end of this year, as I thought back on it. And that's my December Lesson for you.
Comments
Great year!