It’s the most wonderful time of the year

It’s one of the best times of year for those on the “school year” calendar.  Time to look for a 2011 planner!  Or if you’re like me and incredibly stoked about the prospect, time to buy your 2011 planner!  The downside of such nerdy passion is that the selection is currently limited – no cute designs or energetic colors to choose from, as the main crop has yet to come in.  But the post-it I have stuck on the last week of December in my 2010er with all the “transfer this to new calendar” notes has run out of room, so I decided to bite the bullet.

It’s not just the intoxicating fresh, blank pages and the opportunity to fill them with beautiful penmanship – though like a New Year’s diet, the attempt for neat and pretty quickly dwindles to a good intention – but it’s also the promise of what’s to come, what will fill the lines.  Looking back at the past ten months, I shake my head at the randomness, unexpectedness, and goodness.

From dancing horribly in front of three hundred and fifty people to traveling for the first time to Amsterdam, Belgium, and Paris to improving horribly on stage at one of Chicago’s improv institutions to being a girlfriend to a sweet boy who unexpectedly appeared in my kitchen one evening to being a first-time sushi eater to beating out one hundred other teams to win the DFL [Dead Fucking Last] Prize in the Chiditarod to being rubbed down in my first professional massage to seeing Ray LaMontange, David Gray, Counting Crows, Steve Martin, Ricky Gervais, and Mumford ‘n Sons live to witnessing a mature young lady whom I met as a wild third grader via a volunteer program walk across the eighth grade graduation stage to the creation of a cologne based on my Boyfriend Criteria — I didn’t plan on any of it.

I can’t wait to see that which I don’t plan on come to fruition in 2011.