Lessons of 2019

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It’s the first day of the new year, and I’ve been seeing a lot of people reflect on the previous 365 days on social media. I thought I would do something similar, but I don’t want to do a straight recap of what I did last year; you can read my old posts if you want to get an idea of a lot of what I’ve been doing, and some threads I need to wait and see how they turn out before I write about them here. Instead, I thought I’d try to come up with a small list of things I learned from my experiences in the past year. I don’t think every thing you go through is meant to teach you something, and a lot of the time the lessons aren’t all important, but there are always a few you end up stumbling on by accident.

Without getting too specific, here’s what I’ve learned:

  • Sometimes you have to do the hard thing, especially if you’ve been thinking about it for a while (There’s a great post by Elan Morgan about that).

  • It’s better to lean into your weirdness than to put too much effort into concealing it, because in the end it just leaves you feeling hollow, invisible and isolated.

  • I’m better off paying more for the direct flight or the slightly more centrally located hotel.

  • People I’m not related to love me, miss me, and mention me warmly in conversations with friends (This still catches me off guard).

I’ve come to believe that making grand pronouncements about personal changes in the upcoming year is a fool’s errand, but going forward, I’m only going to post in Nine Snowboots every other week. I liked having the weekly post to bring in readers who may not be interested in what I have to say about old sketch comedy shows, but I think my focus will be on that for the next few months while letting my life happen “behind the scenes”, so to speak. I like the release of blogging, but I think I’ve been using it as a substitute for one-on-one “real talk” lately, and I also feel like the more relaxed schedule will allow me to come up with better posts, especially when I go through one of those periods where existing is a little too tiring.

Thanks to everyone who reads this blog, and I hope you have a happy new year.