Year End Review

The other day, someone really important to me told me about how surreal being done with the first semester is. She was riding a train home and said the whole experience was just setting in, and described how strange it was. At that point, I hadn't really sat still long enough to know what she was talking about. After 3 consecutive days of drinking, football game viewing, and wrapping up of lose ends, I've finally gotten a chance to sit down and reflect. As I sit at my kitchen table, alone, listening to music and staring out onto a frozen Lake Michigan-everything really does feel surreal. SO much has happened in such a short period of time, it seems almost unbelievable or impossible to realize how far I've come and changed in less than 6 months. My life is completely different than it was back in Athens. What's really remarkable though is just how quickly things can change and how we as human beings adapt, persevere, and adjust regardless. We find happiness in places and in ways that we never would have imagined before. A couple places I've found happiness:

• In a person who is completely not my type. A person out of my league, a person from a different economic background, a very different childhood. I don't know what we are, or what we will be, but she was really important in getting through some tough times, and I hope I was as good for her as she was for me. And I hope we just let things continue to evolve into whatever makes us happy. I hope she keeps making me laugh like she does. And I hope someday we take a trip, via train, whether we're friends or more.
• In realizing that I was becoming protective of people. I think that's the first sign that the people that you call "friends" are real friends. It's much more obvious that you're becoming protective of the female friends in your life-i think every good man, regardless of whether they ever had a sister-has some sort of protective brother/sister like complex. When I'm calling to make sure people got home safely because I genuinely care about those people. When I'm telling new people in my life to "drive safe" or "be safe" not because it's the easy thing to say but because if something were to happen to them I would be heartbroken, and miss them so much- that's when I know I've got the type of friends I used to have back home. I can never replace the kids down South, but it's comforting to know that you can find good people everywhere.
• In living in a city with character. Knowing I can hop a train, take it to a random neighborhood and find a great restaurant or an awesome dive bar or an indie record store. The other day I walked like 4 blocks from my house in a direction I hadn't really explored and I found all these new shops I had never seen before. I mean, this is a huge city, and when I have the time and money to explore it, I'm going to enjoy it even more. Every corner yields a new discovery, every public transportation experience a new place you pass that you've gotta check out. The faces, food, culture is all so diverse, so eclectic. It's an amazing place. Love of a location is a strange thing, but it's still love.
• In surviving the cold. Okay, so Chicago has a different kind of cold altogether than Atlanta. The type of cold that makes it difficult to think. The type of cold that you have to take a hot shower just to shake the chills. But I've survived it and i like it. There's some weird sense of community I feel in cold weather. It's just like what other topic could 8 million people make small talk about-you can talk about the cold with your friends, your teachers, neighbors, Nigerian cab drivers, homeless guys on the bus-everyone. There's this commonality that we all have that we can all talk about-something everyone experiences and it too gives the city character. Strange, i know, and perhaps I'm just making excuses for the fucking frigid weather-but I really believe I like it.
• In being challenged in ways I've never been before. School is one thing, but there are a lot of other challenges. Finding your way around a new huge city. Having to support your political banter with actual facts-because the people around you know more about it than you do. Making friends. It's all so challenging but so gratifying when you succeed. So yeah, I had to walk considerably farther than I would have liked last night at 4am in 10 degree weather, but I found my way from Wicker Park to Streeterville (pretty far, just for the record), without catching a cab. And drunk. Mission accomplished.
• Being different for once in my life. You go to UGA, you've got 90 percent white kids from upper middle class Atlanta suburbs. Just being from the South makes me different from all the kids from the Chicago and Detroit suburbs. Having worked my way through the second have of school, sets me apart considerably too. My parents helped, but not as much as most kids I've met and I didn't want them to. I'm proud of that accomplishment, proud of that independence.
• Making the Jump. I mean I was scared to move. I'm not gonna sit here and act like I wasn't. It's weird leaving the safety of a place where you have people you know and like around you. It's hard to abandon opportunities that would let you keep those friends and those relationships. But I had to leave, and I did, and I didn't let anything keep me from making that decision. That decision was made by me for my own happiness. The hassles of moving, the more expensive school, the new city where I didn't know anyone, the cold-all of those things could have kept me from making that jump, but sometimes you just know instinctually what's best for you. Moving was it.