I'm still learning

I want to have a good year. In fact, I want to have a GREAT year. I'm excited for it. On New Year's Eve, I thought a lot about my past year, and realized that 2009, in summary, was a terrible year. It may be one of the worst years I've ever had up to this point. I crashed a car, ran out of money, spent the majority of the year feeling stressed and tired, for the first time in my academic life I was not successful with high marks and outstanding performance, and it affected my self-esteem and energy levels. And I really wish I ere exaggerating when I say that's not the half of it.

So because last year was so bad, I want to do everything I can to have a BETTER year. A great year. A year for the books. So here are my resolutions:

1. Touch my toes. My body don't bend that way, yo. But apparently it should. Angela and I are in a competition to be the first to touch our toes. This transcends into an idea that I want to just be IN SHAPE. I think this will help me to have more energy in general, and really, there's no BAD things about being in shape. UW has free swimming for people such as me, and I scheduled it so that I only have classes on Tuesday and Thursday, so I'll have TIME to go to the university just to swim. I love swimming, and I feel the need to do more of it. If I can learn to do a good eggbeater while treading water, that'd be awesome. I should get good enough to do a run, while I'm at it. Yorge just challenged me to do a 5k run in April, or a 10k run in August. That would be terrific.

2. Take good pictures. There's this guy around EBC sometimes named Andrew Goodwin who is a good photographer. One time I saw him taking pictures, and I swear, I experienced what I now call "Camera lust." And I'm finding myself experiencing this every single time I encounter someone who has a nice camera, especially when they don't know how to use their camera, and I think to myself, "I know how to use that camera. I can take GOOD pictures with that camera. But I can't freaking afford it!" - I always get ideas of things I can take pictures of, and portraits I can do, and things I can take, but I lack the camera to take these awesome ideas. I'd like to say that it's not the camera that makes the photographer, therefore I should be able to use what I have to take terrific photos, and really, I have been able to take terrific photos. So I want to enter those terrific photos in photography contests, and see about actually GOING out and putting those ideas in my head onto a picture. Lust is a sin. So I want to turn camera lust into camera love. I'm glad it's not boy lust.

3. Learn Etude Sospiro by Franz Liszt, once and for all. I haven't shown anybody the song in it's entirety, because it is the most beautiful chunk of musical literature I have ever heard, and I kind of want to surprise the world when I can learn it and get it to performance level. (It's also the most insane, hardest chunk of piano literature I have ever played, but that's beside the point) This transcends into an issue of self-discipline, which may be one of the biggest things I struggle with. It has certainly affected my ability to play piano, as well as many other things in my life, and I very much want to get back into learning new songs and improving my musical ability, and in the process, improve my self-discipline. It's a great project, because what it demands musically is at the moment beyond my abilities, so when I do conquer it, I will be able to play many more things much better, and what it will take to learn a song of this difficulty will only demand nothing short than all that I can possibly give and do of myself, and I love challenges like that like I love life.

All of these are selfish resolutions, which isn't a bad thing. They're focused towards improving and challenging myself, and I do this for what I call the Jonathan Livingston Seagull reason: To do better for the sake of doing better. To fly for the sake of flying. I play not because I want to be the best, or think I am the best (I most definitely am NOT) but because I love playing for it's own sake, and nothing more.

This doesn't negate the selfishness in the reasons, and I do not feel I could, in good conscience, have only resolutions that focus on myself without seeking to improve those around me, and seek goodness not for the self's sake, but for the sake of those I love, and those I do not know around me.

This is hard to explain, I think. But 2009 was not COMPLETELY a terrible year. Terrible things happened, but hard and valuable lessons were taught from them. I'm still learning. I feel like I've gained a lot of wisdom from what I have learned, and I make this claim, because I don't want it. I'd rather be ignorant. You're happy when you're ignorant. I told that to my friend Yorge and he said that it's when you feel like that when you know you have wisdom. Wise people don't want wisdom. I feel like I've been burdened with a deep sense of responsibility, which gives me a kind of a holy discontent and a need to act or do something about many different things, and I feel like I know HOW to act and what to do in those situations. Or worse, don't know what to do, and feel terribly powerless as a result. I can no longer sit idly when I feel a responsibility and abilities endowed upon me to act. This scares me. I don't like wisdom. Wisdom is troubling in a deeper sense than any selfish issue has ever been to me. If I am called to use that wisdom, may I seek those opportunities and have the courage to respond to that in humility and obedience. Interestingly enough, obedience turned out to be the biggest thing I learned this year. Funny thing: it tends to be terrifying, but somehow, it works out. It just... does.

I really, really hope I don't just write about all these ideas. I've tried five times to write this blog (at least) but each time I get to this part I feel guilty, or as though I'll just write it and still live... passively. I hope I am continually challenged to live up to my words, by myself and those around me. (Please remind me. I need it!) Writer's have to own up to the words they toss out, as though those words are living creatures, offspring that you made, therefore you must choose to defend and endorse. Besides being the messenger and the reporter, the writer also has to live up to those dangerous words that scramble away from that pen. There's so much I want to do, or say, but I'm not sure how to say it. I suppose... I'm still learning.