Defending the year that’s gone by
31 December 2008 
22 gets a bad rap.
I realized this quite a while ago, but hadn’t gotten around to writing it. But seeing as I’m about to turn 23 and leave my 22-year-old self behind, here’s my parting farewell to my 22nd year.
Those who have passed the age of 22 frown upon those who posses it.
You’ve Got Mail’s Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan):
“Those stupid 22-year-old girls with no last name. ‘Hi, I’m Kimberley.’ ‘Hi, I’m Janice.’ What’s wrong with them? Don’t they know you’re supposed to have a last name? It’s like they’re a whole generation of cocktail waitresses.”
The Poet offering advice to poor little clueless me:
“Trust me. Your relationships are going to get a lot more complicated. A lot more complicated.”
He said it in such a knowing tone, as if he were warning me.
Sex and the City’s Charlotte to her replacement at the art gallery:
“You’re 22! What do you know about life? I mean, art?”
A friend, on my dating blog compared to those of women in their 30s:
“And you apparently have so much to write about at 22.”
As if single 22-year-olds have no dating affairs to recount. Where do you think 30-year-olds got their experience?
People look upon us with a mixture of pity and disgust, fear and excitement. They disapprove even while knowing that they were there once. We have reputations for being easy, naive and senseless. We’ve been called perky and ruthless.
It’s true that we are the freshmen of the real world. Many of us have just escaped college and have a salary and a life of our own for the first time. I’m sure that with all this change comes a few bad decisions.
But it also comes with a lot of fear and a lot to overcome. We’ve been leaping for a while, but this is our first big flight from the nest; hearing snide remarks about 22-year-olds is not really helping us.
Life at 22 isn’t actually glamorous and care free. We’re lonely and we’re poor, and all that glamorous stuff just fills the void until we find our place.
So to quote one more Hollywood character on looking back at those of us in our early twenties:
Have a little compassion. Ladies, the only thing worse than being single and in your thirties in this city, is being single and in your twenties.
-Carrie Bradshaw.
what would you attempt to do?
29 December 2008 
The first gift I opened on Christmas Eve was a paperweight. I opened a lot of great gifts after that, but the paperweight was one of the best.
what would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?
Inspiration is a funny thing. My uncle first told me the phrase on this paperweight when I was afraid of moving to New York. Back then, it was a paperweight on his desk, a constant reminder that he can do anything he puts his mind to, and he was simply passing along that advice to me.
I look over my To-Do list today at work — process invoices, file contracts, proofread and compile reports — and I know there’s no risk of failing. But now a paperweight, heavy with inspiration is at the bottom of that list.
What about the challeges, the things I could fail to accomplish? It asks. Why haven’t they been added to the list?
I knew about the paperweight. Its phrase is in my blog archives and on my Facebook profile. But having it right here, feeling the weight of its meaning, reminds me that I should add more to my to-do list.
- I will not allow yesterday’s success to lull me into today’s complacency, for this is the great foundation of failure.
Singlehood Fading…. :(
23 December 2008 
I think I might have a boyfriend. Damn.
I really did not want to pop right back into an exclusive relationship after being single in NYC for a measly four months. And WHY would a guy who clearly isn’t a serial-dater suddenly act all boyfriendish toward me?
Boston said he hasn’t dated anyone since college. He graduated 3 1/2 years ago.
We haven’t said what we’re doing, but I think it’s slanting down toward the dating end of the table. We text about 10-20 times a day, call each other a couple times a week, and we’re scheduling monthly to bi-monthly trips to each other’s respective cities.
She even stopped wearing pink! (That won't happen to me)
I’m beginning to feel guilty about flirting with other guys…
SINGLEHOOD! Where did you go?
I want to be single.
He clearly doesn’t date often, so we can conclude that he wants to be single.
We live in different cities, so singlehood should be the obvious resort.
BUT, we liked each other immediately. I think they call that chemistry. Whatever it is, I invited him to a New Year’s Eve party.
Freezing in good company
Boston was cold. I kept trying to talk, but my cheeks were frozen. All I could do was laugh.
And then there were the socks. Or rather there weren’t socks. I was treading through the oldest cemeteries in America, wondering how long it would take for my toes to get frostbite in ballet flats with no socks. Paul Revere was probably never that unprepared. Though he also probably never wore ballet flats.
We decided to buy some socks for my feet. So we walked into a bookstore. Not to buy socks, but because it was on the way and we both seemed to gravitate toward the door. He suggested that it would be a good place to warm my feet, and though it had no fireplaces, I agreed. It had enough books to warm even the coldest of feet, I’m sure.
He and I wandered through shelves upon shelves in the same way we had wandered through graves upon graves, stopping to admire some, squinting at the odd names of others, and walking past some with hardly a second glance. I bought a couple, books that is, and one for him as well.
Then I bought socks. Pink of course. With warm toes we continued into the North End, where he was a wonderful tour guide, pointing out interesting things that he knew nothing about, and wandering aimlessly trying in vain to find that one thing about which he knew loads of random facts.
By the time the dinner kiss came around I was having a miserable feeling about having a great time.
“Shit,” I texted to Amanda. “I like him. I like him a lot.”
I’m not sure what I was expecting. To have a horrible time? To be completely awkward and want to leave to save my own continuing embarrassment? To feel stuck with someone I knew hardly anything about and realize I didn’t want to learn anything about him? But then why would I have come?
The guitar player in the restaurant sang an Italian song that we (just our table, thanks to our over-involved waiter) were required to kiss at the end of. We did, over the table. It was a small table with a safety candle (fake flame) in an intimate setting — very close to the other diners.
I laughed. Boston was cold. But the company in Boston was warm and welcoming. I’m looking forward to seeing him again.
Typing to type for me
I need to write. I feel like I haven’t written in so long. I type just because I think that I should, and not because I want to type.
I think that no one wants to read a love story. But I love reading love stories. Especially the weird ones, the ones that never should have happened. The ones that last a week, but it’s a week of forever.
And writing has a mind of its own. Why not let it flow.
I had an absolutely fantastic weekend. I told my mom about it over the phone, I’m not even good at talking really, and she laughed. And I laughed. And she laughed some more. So it’s a good story. But I’m afraid to write it because I think I’ve been boring my few readers.
This is an exercise of flow. As noted, I only have a few readers, so rather than write for them, I’ll write for myself.
