I wish I had something cool and indie and hipster to share with you, but my best album?  Taylor Swift, Fearless.  It has everything I love in an album: love songs, hate songs, catchy ballads and even a really sweet tribute to her mom that never fails to make me tear up.  I love that there is such a self-aware 19-year-old in the world, one who is so lovely and mature.  And I love, love, love singing my heart out to her in the car, whenever I need a lift.

Call me crazy, but that’s hands down, my best album of ’09.

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Ugh, I don’t like this one.

Sorry, it’s true.   This year has been rife with challenges, real ones.

Sometimes, our biggest issues aren’t necessarily visible.  They are inside of us, where no one can really see them, besides a glimpse here or there, or a conversation in whispered tones.  Yes, there is work and relationships and life in general and the fact that my car windows get smashed at least twice a year.  But the truth is that my biggest challenge is myself.

Yes, me.  I am my own biggest challenge.  I get in my own way.  And this year has been all about realizing it.  About seeing how I’ve yet to get my weight under control (ugh), how I need to learn to say NO, how I need to be confident in what I’m doing, how I need to trust myself and trust those around me.

When I was a little, mullet-wearing, bespectacled dork with wicked acne and a clairnet in hand, I wasn’t what you’d call confident, but I had this other thing in me; this fight.  Even through college, my young adult years, I possessed this sense that I could do anything, or accomplish anything, or be anything I wanted.  Slowly, the older I got, and the more I endured, it somehow slipped away.  Sometimes, I look back on the past few years and still marvel at all that those years have held.

2009 has been all about taking a hard look at myself, and seeing what I need to do to improve.  Seeing the holes and starting to patch them.  The biggest challenge has been realizing that it’s not anyone else’s fault or problem, it’s realizing that I hold the key.

Now, I just need to decide what to do with it.

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2009 hasn’t been exactly what I’d call a peaceful year.  In fact, it’s been the opposite.  From pink slips at work to family health troubles to moving in with the boyfriend to a variety of other issues, 2009 has brought ups and downs, highs and lows unlike any other year. 

I am exhausted.  Seriously. 2010 better be freaking awesome to make up for this year.  It was difficult for me to think of a moment of peace, in all honesty.  But then, I remembered one.

It was the week after my dad was diagnosed with cancer, and the day after my family was gathered in a hospital waiting room and told that my grandmother might not make it.  I was profoundly sad.  I’d been grumpy and horrified and exhausted and at the same time, I was angry.  So, so, angry–the kind of anger that bubbles up and makes you snappy and feel awful.  I’d yelled at my students and my boyfriend and the cat and the people on the road.  I couldn’t yell anymore—there was no one around, or you can bet your butt I’d have yelled at them, too.

I arrived home from work, and did something completely uncharacteristic for me: I strapped on my running shoes.  Too often, I find solace in the couch and a cup of fro-yo, but nothing could satiate the anger and sadness and general awfulness I felt that day.  I felt as if I was going to burst out of my skin.  I had to get out of the house, so I walked to a nearby nature trail.

And then I started to run.  Hard.  The kind of run that hurts, that makes your lungs ache and your face sweat.  The run that will kill your quads the next day.  It was 90 degrees and uncharacteristically humid, and the trail was dusty, so I could feel my own sweat mixing with the dirt rising up, but I didn’t care.  I turned up my iPod and ran for my life. 

I kept going, despite being out of breath, until I literally couldn’t breathe.  I stopped, heaving and knelt in the dirt.

And cried. 

I cried for my dad, for my mom, for my brother and I.  I cried for my grandma.  I cried because I was pissed off that this was our family’s lot at the moment.  I cried at the unfairness of it all.  I cried out of fear of the unknown, of all the things I could be crying about if things didn’t change.  It was the ugly cry—snot, red face, animal-esque noises and more tears than I knew I had.

And then, I stopped. 

I don’t mean to sound like some quasi-hippie wackadoo, but I felt something.  I felt calm, like everything would be okay.  My anger was sapped, and my sadness was replaced with an intense peace, a knowing peace, that it was going to be okay.  I picked myself up off the ground, wiped my face and walked home.

That isn’t to say that I never felt anxious again, or that I didn’t worry, but I held on to that ugly little moment when poor, fat me, couldn’t breathe in the dirt after running harder than I ever had before.

And sure enough, everything has been okay.  My dad is healing, my grandma is alive, and it seems that everything else is going just as it should.  And I am grateful, beyond all words and measure, for all that has happened since then.

Maybe I should run more?  Can you imagine how peaceful I’d be if I trained for a marathon?  Good lord. 

All kidding aside, I will never, ever forget that moment, when a peace gripped me and propelled me through the days to come.

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I try my best to keep work out of my blog, but I have been really fortunate this year to learn so much about being a better educator.  In California, to complete your final or “clear” credential, you have to work through an additional series of classes.  While the workshops have been helpful, the true source of my help this year has been from my amazing support provider, Lynda.  We meet, speak on the phone and email, and honestly, in an environment of budget cuts and other struggles, her support and encouragement have made my year bearable.  I’m fortunate in that I hands down LOVE what I get to do, and wouldn’t trade my profession for anything.  Still, it is a huge responsibility, and one I take seriously.  Lynda has taught me to be better at what I do, to be more aware and to be more effective.    Her leadership has reminded me WHY I do what I do, and helped me learn to do it to the best of my ability.  I feel really, really thankful that a state mandated program has ended up being a HUGE blessing in my life.  I know that the things I’ve learned as a result will last me for years to come.

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So, the wisdom teeth are out.

It was fine, all said and done.  Here’s my one recommendation: don’t be awake during it.  Just…don’t.  Yes, I was numbed, and “relaxed” but it didn’t quite work for me.  I don’t know all they did, but I do know that they pulling, the sounds, the pressure was waaayyy too much for me to handle.  As a dental-phobic person, I just think that being completely asleep would have been better for all involved.  But, the pain hasn’t been too bad AT ALL, and that’s saying something, since for the past six weeks, I’ve woke up to extreme pain in my teeth.  I’m pretty thankful.

Sadly, I missed yesterday’s Best of ’09.  And I need to do todays question as well.  So, here they are!

12/3—Best article: I read a lot of great things this year.  The internet is full of great info, great writers, great people.  But, I think I need to go with an old favorite writer, Anne Lamott.  She published “How To Find Out Who You Really Are” in Oprah magazine.  I love her, and I love it—so much wisdom.  Her writing always encourages and inspires me.

12/4—Best Book:  This year, I discovered the AMAZING Jhumpa Lahiri.  Her writing absolutely blows my mind.  In fact, I give her the highest compliment I think I can give to a writer: I want to write when I read her writing.  She makes me want to tell my own stories, to strive to be half the writer she is.  I’d highly recommend Unaccustomed Earth.

Anyways, I know this post is sort of lame, but there are mashed potatoes to eat and naps to take.  Happy Friday!

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2009 wasn’t a year of too much travel, but that’s okay, because the best trip, hands down would still be to Andrew’s childhood home in Springfield, Illinois.  I’d been to Springfield before, for a Christmas visit, and absolutely loved it.  Still, throughout the Christmas trip, Andrew and his sister kept saying, “Come back in the summer—it’s so much better in the summer!”

When we landed one June afternoon and had our first dinner on the family porch, overlooking Lake Springfield, I knew that they were so right.

Visiting during the summer meant afternoons spent balancing on neon water noodles in the crisp lake or tooling around in their boat.  I laughed hysterically while Andrew pulled me around the lake on the tube, trying his darndest to knock me and his sister, Paige off the tube.  I shared glasses of white wine with Andrew’s mom and enjoyed her delicious cooking.  Andrew and I went out to lunch and took a long walk through a gorgeous garden.  We met up with friends at bars and he drove me around the places where he grew up.  I saw my first firefly and ate my millionth horseshoe.  I enjoyed fireworks with Andrew’s arm around me as we watched their reflection in the sky and on the lake on the 4th of July.  I stayed up late, slept in late, and napped when I felt like it.  There were board games and giggles and way, way too much snacking.

Sure, many of these things are things that we could do here, in California.  But Illinois is magic—part firefly, part humidity, part family of the person I love, and part break from the everyday.  It is a true vacation in that we don’t do much of anything—we just get away, with no agenda, and no guilt about not having one.  It’s rest.

I can’t wait to go back—both for a winter visit in just a few weeks and for summer 2010.

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