15 years in the 2000s

here it is a Wednesday in 2015 and I'm drinking coffee and flirting with the idea of what it all means and where the time goes.  I spent some time yesterday trying to find my 10 things to do better in 2014 list and to my dismay I didn't find one.  '14 was a bad blogging year for me, so it appears I didn't even do one.  I'll instead list 10 worthy accomplishments and milestones from 2014, which is bound to make me feel better.

1.  Getting married to the love of my life - This major milestone snuck in there at the last minute of 2014, but it's been in the works for a long time.  I'm pleased to be a married man, happy to put behind me all those trappings of the single life (surely it is just this easy?).  I take on the armor of devotion with great care and I look forward to excelling in my role as sworn friend, companion and lover.

2.  Getting an A in accounting 1 at Los Angeles Community College.  - Grades never did mean a thing to me, in fact school never meant much to me.  It's tempting to sit here at my desk all these years removed and say that I regret squandering my opportunity learn but I didn't, so I won't.  I learned a lot in school, though it was 90% a social education, and that education has served me very well, but now I'm looking down the barrel of continuing my education and I find a shift in my priorities.  To my complete surprise I loved the experience of being back in a classroom and I look forward to continuing my education.  Angela and I begin accounting 2 in February, and from there who knows where this new adventure might go.

3.  Becoming an uncle - holy cow this one is big.  I now seem to understand in a mild way that trans-formative experience that must be parent hood.    Witnessing the amazing journey of my beloved sister into parent hood has affected me in a deep and wondrous way.  Watching her young daughter Eva come into life and puts the continuum of humanity in perspective.  Things happen and people get older, new people will replace the old people.

4.  Being an asshole - I catch myself a lot being a total asshole.  Nothing new to being an asshole, but catching myself doing it is a pretty late breaking development.

5.  Musical Floundering - This thing I have with creating music just keeps going and I keep going along with it.  I've had some strange years in trying to figure out where my true north lies in relation to these creations.  It is difficult to peruse an endeavor that can be judged in a myriad of ways, it's hard to separate signal from noise.  And then it isn't, because I the value of the pursuit has nothing to do with economics or acceptance of ones work, it's far more personal for me.  It's a never ending puzzle box.  And yet there is always hope.
Something seems to have flipped in my ears, and I hear things that weren't there before.  I know that the work I'm doing now is better than ever before.  I have far better tools than I've ever had, and I have talented people around me to help me use them.   I look forward to dropping the 8th S no S album, and to working hard to make Turbo Sunshine and Devin Tait and the Traitors be extra special.

6.  Running, Etc. - I didn't run as much in  2014.  I started the year injured and ended it with a month of being sick.  I'm growing more cognizant of my bodies 3.5 decades on this planet.  It alternates between a creeping fear of the time when my body will cease to take the abuse I heap at it, and a warm feeling of gratitude for the fact that it still does.  What has differed in 2014 over other years is that I seem to have raised the baseline of my out of peak fitness state.  Even after all my holiday shenanigans, and lack of exercise while in school my weight has stayed lower than usual.  I ran last night seriously for the first time in a couple of months, I was able to maintain a respectable pace for five miles.  I won't win any races at that pace, but I still feel free with the night air on my skin.

7. Angie and I did moderate travelling this year.  Experiencing New Orleans for our first time ever was a delight.  Also Joshua Tree and our first foray into camping in pioneer town.  That Angie enjoys sleeping in a tent was a big development in itself, it opens the possibilities.

8.  Being ready to embrace big changes - The winds of change blow stronger every year, I'm ready to be swept up and excited to find where we will land.

9.  The Mind Improved -  I haven't been book reading like I want to, but I've absorbed much new information and I see that my young man's fear of a loss of curiosity was largely unfounded.  I'm fortunate that I'm capable of extreme optimism, and that I still like to think about what it all might mean.

10.  I'm an adult and I'm happy to be one.  It's not the limiter I once thought it was, it's an achievement.    It's like this quote from Louis CK, who I'll have the great fortune to see live on sunday night:

• If you're older, you're smarter. I just believe that. If you're in an argument with someone older than you, you should listen to 'em ... even if they're wrong, their wrongness is rooted in more information than you have.