2013: Loss

This is an incredibly late "2013" essay, but it's been a whirlwind beginning to 2014 as well. So here it is anyway.

How else could I sum up last year without using the world "loss?"

Earlier in 2013, I used to have a living mom and a boyfriend. By August, I had neither. Mama died after a fifteen month battle with cancer. The boyfriend, of almost nine months at that point, chose not to come to her funeral. Talk about adding insult to injury. (Disclaimer: the boyfriend is not the villain in my life, and since our breakup, I have realized many other things that tell me we were not built to last, but it would be dishonest to not say how much that choice did hurt me.) I went into August motherless, single and unemployed.

Also at the end of July, I had a glitch in my phone that required me to do a "hard" reset to my phone so it would function normally again. The particular cord I had to connect to my laptop had become iffy and during the reset, it became disconnected and with that, everything on my phone was erased. Most was backed up, such as contacts and photos and apps, but what wasn't were the text messages. I had had that phone for two and a half years and every text message from that time had been erased. Now that's not the biggest deal, but when your mom had only died a week and a half earlier and you no longer could read text messages from her... it was a big deal.

But I took care of the unemployment situation quickly on August 1st, and was hired on to continue with Austin Learning Academy, where I had done my second AmeriCorps year. While in AmeriCorps, I co-teached/assisted in seven different classes, but since September, I've had my own Advanced ESL Class. The last couple of days of July, I even tried to demand of the universe that it be "Good News August'" because of how much crap had happened in July. The job was certainly good news, and my grandmother's health, which had been so precarious in July as well, was improving. August passed with no major bad news, but in September my pet betta fish (who had lived for four years!) died. I cried a lot more than I thought I would.

And then came the flood.

In mid-October, our family was planning on going to the Texas State Fair, and I had chosen to spend the night in Salado the night before we were going.

But the next morning, my dad woke me up to tell me that David had called in the night and the rainstorm had been so bad in Austin that our apartment had flooded... 3 in. of standing water, coming in through the front door and the walls on the side of the apartment where my room is, reaching almost to the back wall of our apartment.

So instead of getting ready to go to the fair, I got in the car and drove back to Austin to see the full extent of the damage.

I am not the neatest person, and we had only moved in to the apartment a month before, and many things were still in cardboard boxes or stacked in piles on the floor. Even of what was in plastic bins, a couple had been turned on their sides for more space-saving storage in one of my closets, so the water seeped in them as well.

After finally seeing what was damaged, we had several hundreds of dollars of books either ruined completely or warped by the water, much of David's record collection (that had not been unpacked and were in cardboard boxes) soaked, many of my journals soaked and warped, with whole pages unreadable now, all the letters and cards I have saved, about half of which went to recycling and the rest of which I laid out on the floor to dry. My college scrapbook materials were in a cardboard box, so most of that went straight to the trash or recycling--all of my photographs from my year as a photo student--stuck together.

2013 stripped me clean. I know that I am still so fortunate, but loss was very real to me this past year.

And it has taught me in a practical way the lesson I have long heard: You can't take it with you. None of this is permanent, and there's nothing we can do to make it so.

My grandma told me she was hoping that maybe we could have a Good News 2014 like our Good News August, but it certainly hasn't been great so far. Health problems and phone problems and weather problems and car problems... Can't escape.

But it's not that there hasn't been good news. And though I've said goodbye and good riddance to 2013 two months ago, I know I can't say goodbye to all bad news. I can only keep moving forward, every moment knowing that loss is simply part of life, and that life is just as impermanent as everything else.

But I have a choice on how to live my life.

New Year's Resolutions

Last year, I made a resolution to write in this blog once a week.

I only posted 10 entries in 2013.

In my defense, for the first half of the year, I was working an average of 50 hours a week with AmeriCorps. And my mom had cancer. And I had a boyfriend. Very little writing.

Then to start of the second half of the year, my mom died. No more AmeriCorps, no more cancer or mom, no more boyfriend, lots more grief and depression. Even less writing.

But I love writing. Even as I am in the midst of trying to finish my essays for graduate school, I am thinking about all these things I'd like to write about in this blog. So I made the same new year's resolution this year--I will try to write in here at least once a week.

Today was my first day back in class--as most of you know, I teach Advanced ESL to adults--and of course, part of our lesson was about new year's resolutions. We discussed the tradition, and I had them create a few of their own for 2014.

As for me, I have made new year's resolutions since I was a teenager. They used to be a really long list--like, 50 resolutions (I was inspired to change, but usually only managed to work toward about three of them). I love to make lists. (I also love to read lists, which is probably why I love Buzzfeed so much). I make to-do lists all the time--I have them on post-its in my classroom, varying from things I need to do this week to things I need to get done/want to do in the semester. I have separate lists for types of tasks.

I also make lists in my journal--just for funsies. Lists in my journals as a teen included gems such as "Boys I Think Are Cute But I Don't Necessarily Like" (a list of about 15 boys, one of which I didn't know his name and just called him Las Palmas boy), "The People I Knew Who Were At The Middle School Dance" (there were these for every dance and party I attended in middle school), "The 7th Grade Couples At Durham School Of The Arts In 2001-2002" (if anyone needs a copy of this, let me know), and "List Of Injuries I Have Right Now" (if you knew me as a child/teen.... or even now, you'll understand why this actually took a list). More recent lists in my journal as an adult have been "Dances I Have Choreographed" (that list was over 100 items), "Dances I Want To Choreograph" (not quite as long), "Places I Want To Visit" (ever-growing, though I am slowly getting to work on it), and "How Am I Going To Finish My AmeriCorps Hours?" (sometime we'll have to talk about all the random volunteer opportunities I did during AmeriCorps so I would make my hours). Oh, and occasionally, I'll list all the states and capitals in the U.S. just to make sure I still remember them all.

But back to new year's resolutions.

I've gotten somewhat better at picking actual concrete and attainable goals for my new year's resolutions. Starting in 2011, I've made it a resolution to read 50 books a year. That first year, I made it to 48. 2012, I only read 37. But in 2013, thanks to audiobooks on my commute, I read 51! I think it's a great challenge for me to read more, which I love to do but don't always make time for. Also in 2011, I challenged myself to lose weight. I did, I joined weight watchers and lost 15 lbs. But then I moved to LA and excuses, excuses, point is, I've gained it all back and then some since then.

In January 2012, I even led a spirituality night with my community based on The Happiness Project, one of the books I read in 2011. I focused it on resolutions to make ourselves happier that year.

For years, I made it a new year's resolution to stop biting my nails. I even got a little more creative last year by trying to say I would paint my nails every week (I am less inclined to bite them when they are pretty/nasty tasting polish on them), but nope, didn't work (well maybe it would have if I had actually painted my nails that often).

Resolutions are so full of optimism. We take the things we are most insecure about and try to change them. Or we decide that that thing we've always wanted to do--this will be that year.

As regular readers know, it's hard for me to be optimistic these days. Yet, on January 2nd this year, I went shopping and happened upon a new journal that I fell in love with. I bought it and later that day decided to start writing. But in the front of each journal I've had for the last few years--it starts with lists, of course! Lists of what I want to accomplish that year, lists of habits I'd like to change or maintain, lists of what was good about the previous year, lists of what I'm looking forward to in the year ahead.

So despite it all, I made my new year's resolutions as I do every year. There's eight, but let's be real, thats probably the fewest I've made in my entire life (even last year there were at least 20). I hope you'll send me good vibes as I embark on this journey of positive change and look forward to this coming year--and I send them along your way as well!