Comparisons

Listen: Terrible Love - The National | Terrible Love - Birdy (The National cover)

This time last year, I was packing up to leave Des Moines for good. I had gone through Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's Day, a fair bit of thinking and alone time. It was snowing that time, not as cold as I had expected, and it was during this time that I realised that I was really going to miss the snow.

It's a year later, both by Gregorian and lunar calendars, and there have been - inevitably - a lot of changes. You'll probably never hear the whole story - or stories, because there are quite a few - but I think you would agree with me that how you felt last year isn't the same as this year's. And it's probably how you look at it, where you are now, that makes you feel either happier or sadder that things have changed. (Captain Obvious facepalms himself at this obvious statement, but never mind.)

On my part, I'm happier on a few things, sad on others - of course you can't have everything wonderful and perfect and nyan cats crapping rainbows. I mean if cats did crap rainbows while wearing PopTarts, I wouldn't be complaining that much about my life now.

But I am where I am, and on some things, I'm perfectly happy where I am.

I think I should stop talking about age from this year onwards. I've gone from feeling terribly young to terribly old within a few days to young again, so I'm not sure what am I supposed to be feeling right now.

Probably a big mess of everything. This is being twenty-something, yes?

The pretense and dumb self-confidence of being able to guess what will happen next - how I will react - they count for nothing in the end.

But this is just me trying to sound profound/intelligent/deep - so ignore that and just hope, like I do, that things will work out all right in the end. I think they do.

I may complain about some of the things I went through in 2011, but they are, in their own ways, proof that things did work out for me. And I'm grateful for that.