On New Year's Eve a good friend of mine scoffed at the celebratory screams and hoots ringing in the New Year. He made the argument that time is irrelevant, that people stupidly use time as a marker to make things perhaps more important than they are. That basically, we have invented time, and that our existence, measured in time almost loses it's meaning. While i understand this deeper philosophical standpoint, I also enjoy the frames of time by which I can monitor my adventures, the changing of my ideas, my emotions, my interactions; my progress, so to speak, as a human being. Life is quite the time frame (for some). It feels indeed long, and at times, I suppose it feels short. All around it seems to be changing, speeding up and slowing down, and just p.a.s.s.i.n.g. Days move in and out. For insomniacs like myself, the night crawls through me like a slow parasite, taking it's time to suck from me. Whether or not we like to admit it, time, or life, or whatever it is, moves on, taking us with it, changing our bodies, our metabolisms, our ideals, our hearts, our guts. Everything keeps on keeping on. What a lovely and comforting thought. I digress.
On New Year's Eve, yet another calendar year was exhausted, evaporated into thin air, gone. And we all, drunken with hope and fear and excitement and relief, opened our arms, whooped it up and kissed someone (what a silly tradition), to out with the old in with the new. And our sins, and guilt and shortcomings from the previous year, all washed away into the vault, with all of the previous years. All of our wonderful adventures, and flings, and progression and advances put into the box of things to be cherished and romanticized and compared to for this new year. This new era. We made resolutions and promises and felt the seemingly eternal re-birth making it's way into our bellies. We drank to keep the flame of all of our new beginning burning so bright. We drank to try as hard as we could, to just hold on a little tighter to what we thought we knew in 2010. We made it into the morning of 2011, feeling haggard and tired and still intoxicated with all of that extinguished campfire of last year, still figuratively speaking, smelling of the smoky glow of that fire. Did it feel like an entirely new year? Well, I suppose for some of us, it did. For me, I felt as though I had let go of some of everything. I liked to utilize that year as a mile marker. For me, it was the end of a decade. I turned thirty one this year. Just before the New Year. I spent quite a bit of time contemplating the last ten years of my life. And shit, I have really done quite a bit in those ten years. I suppose though, most of us have. All of us measure our lives in time. Through the grand time frame, we can measure all that we have or have not accomplished. Although it is wholly a made up concept (or so in the way that we human beings utilize it), it is a great measuring stick.
The one year of 2010 may have been my most productive and travelled year. I changed so very drastically within that year. I compiled a list of the places I visited and lived and almost blew my own mind. I was lucky enough to have roughly four months off. In those four months I was productively traveling, learning, spending time with friends and family, losing my mind, thinking about suicide, being so grateful to live and genuinely having the time to think about time and utilizing my time and understanding my freedom, and making and breaking goals and so fourth and so on. My occupations over the past year were a joke for the most part. I have not had a serious job since I was a social worker a few years ago. I have been a seasonal worker for an entire year consecutively (on feb 1) and it certainly has had it's ups and downs. I've met more people in the course of a year than perhaps a few years combined. I visited more National Parks, National Forests and National Monuments than I ever have in my lifetime, all in this one year. I became more comfortable with my body and my mind this year. My intimate relations this year surprised me as well. As I shouldn't mention them, for reasons of respect, I can simply say that I was all over the board. (no pun intended). At the end of 2010, I was in fact, in the same place emotionally as I was at the beginning, free. I was on the road a great amount of time and for the first time felt road weary. I lived in the desert, glacial mountains, the piney woods, the thriving, throbbing metropolis, the snowy canyon of a ski resort, the dry but green hill country and all of the in between of the road. I rode a train cross country for the first time in my life, watching America slip by and letting all of my dreams run out of my greasy head like spoiled paint. I fell in love with the lives and thoughts and guts of all of the people I met along the way and tried unsuccessfully to catalogue them inside of myself in some way or another.
I stopped being a photographer. I stopped being a writer. I stopped being so self absorbed and tried to ABSORB everything around me. I lost myself and found myself and found you and you found me. I gave up on luck and quit making decisions and became ok with riding the horse that was dragging me around. I don't want to sound new age-y, but I feel as thought 2010 was symbolic. My decade went out with an incredible fucking BANG. I watched the last sparkle of my blazing firework die out in the sky and promised myself that I would in fact, attempt to take the reigns in 2011. That I would let go of all of the shitty parts of my wild wild life and try to be at peace with myself, instead of burning the candle at both ends. Hopefully I can do so. It's hard to re-learn when one is so set in their ways. I have to go slide into my penguin suit and serve the upper class expensive food in a minute, so I'll spare you all of the bullshit. It's snowing gently outside, the mountains are all fogged over. (like my brain, I've had a concussion for the past week and I secretly enjoy the white noise it creates in my head to an extent). Life does indeed feel a little different. I feel different. Perhaps it's because it's 2011. Perhaps it's because I have agreed to the allusion that a New Year has in fact begun. I'll take it. I'll fill myself with hope and desire and all of the goals I've always believed in. I'll wonder if I can make this next year and this next decade as amazing and adventurous and full of life and wonder as the last. Can I really have both insanity and control? I guess I'll have to find out. Or make it so.
For now, I'll leave you with the list of 2010. I'll post a blog of only photos from 2010 later. Enjoy your New Year. Hopefully I'll be lucky enough to see some of you this year. That's one of my resolutions. I'll find you, or for a change, you come find me.
THE YEAR OF 2010- Places wandered
National Parks, National Monuments, National Forests
Caddo Lake, Texas
Big Bend National Park, Texas
Big Bend State Park, Texas
Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico
Guadalupe National Park, Texas
Lincoln National Forest, New Mexico
White Sands National Monument, New Mexico
Gila National Forest, New Mexico
Gila Wilderness Area, New Mexico
Apache National Forest, New Mexico/Arizona
Coconino National Forest, Arizona
Navajo Bridge National Monument, Arizona
Vermillion Cliffs National Monument, Arizona
Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona
Kaibab National Forest, Arizona
Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah
Escalante National Monument, Utah
Dixie National Forest, Utah
Capitol Reef National Park, Utah
Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Utah
Natural Bridge National Monument, Utah
Arches National Park, Utah
Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area, Utah/Wyoming
Bridger-Teton National Forest, Wyoming
Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming
Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
Gallatin National Forest, Montana
Glacier National Park, Montana
Waterton National Park, Alberta Canada
Stehekin, Northern Cascades National Park, Washington
Lake Chelan, Washington
White Mountains National Forest, New Hampshire
Acadia National Park, Maine
Zion National Park, Utah
Wasatch National Forest, Utah
States 2010
Texas
New Mexico
Arizona
Utah
Wyoming
Montana
Washington
New Hampshire
Vermont
Maine
Massachusetts
Pennsylvania
New Jersey
Delaware
Other Places
Canada
Puerto Rico
Towns that seemed to have some bearing
Uncertain, TX
Marshall, TX
Midland, TX
Odessa, TX
Marathon, TX
Alpine, TX
Fort Davis, TX
Presidio, TX
Pecos, TX
Terlingua, TX
Study Butte, TX
Lajitas, TX
Carlsbad, NM
San Juan, PR
Rincon, PR
Van Horn, TX
White’s City, NM
Artesia, NM
Elk/Hope/Dunkel, NM
Alamagordo, NM
Silver City, NM
Sanders, AZ
Winslow, AZ
Flagstaff, AZ
Kanab, UT
Boulder, UT
Torrey, UT
Bicknell, UT
Moab, UT
Jackson Hole ,WY
Livingston, MT
Missoula, MT
Babb, MT
Whitefish, MT
Kalispell, MT
Cardston, Canada
Lethbridge, Canada
Las Vegas, NV
St. George, UT
Hungry Horse, MT
Essex, MT
Columbia Falls, MT
East Glacier, MT
Browning, MT
Wenatchee, WA
Chicago, IL
Springfield, MA
Brattleboro, VT
Townshend, VT
Conway, NH
Denmark, ME
Fryeburg, ME
Bridgeton, ME
Portland, ME
Bar Harbor, ME
Boston, MA
Philadelphia, PA
Cherry Hill, NJ
Austin, TX
New Braunfels, TX
Llano, TX
Vineland, NJ
Claymont, DE
Waymart, PA
Salt Lake City, UT
Alta, UT
Sandy, UT
