2008 in Review

This past year was one of extremes, of opportunity and change. One year ago I was looking forward to my final semester at college and wondering how it would end. I did not expect what was, though. It was a blur of food from Sonic, CLEP tests, formals, and hope. My favorite times were either sitting in a tree the day I came back from Hawaii or listening to Gnarls Barkley in my car. The worst was when my best friend's engagement ended. Then I graduated and wondered what it meant.

The summer was warm and lovely, days spent hiking and climbing mountains and eating ice cream with my youth group, preparing lessons and praying they would be worth something, sharing sermons and repainting rooms and wondering why I planned yet another lock-in. My heart was full of worry those days and I spent my free time on my bike, only to find that even riding thirty miles did not exhaust enough to slow my mind.

The summer ended with a sudden shift in something I had been counting on to see me through the coming changes, as a promised love became a mixture of confusion and derision. The lightning-fast flux left me with questions: was the love I once saw the truth or the lie? Then what of the subsequent lack thereof? Which was Jekyll, and which Hyde? . . .and will “her” friends still talk to me?

Soon I found myself in another country. After stepping off the plane it hit me that I was completely on my own. I spent the first two days trying to arrange a means of travel to two different podunk cities and did not eat more than half an apple. All the while my eyes scanned each street for an internet cafe.

Now I am no less a foreigner than when I arrived, and I have never been more tired. My hopes for the near future include preparing a working portfolio of photographs, sharing some original songs, and finishing my current read-through of the Bible that I began in late October. For the far future, I look forward to getting a job that pays in dollars, starting a band, and falling in love.

At the risk of sounding Dickensian, 2008 yielded some of the very best and the very worst that I have known. Some day I will look back on it fondly, but for now I am ready to move on.