Year-End Review

I don’t like getting nostalgic.

Whenever I do, it feels like conceding weakness. “Oh, yeah, I miss that time way back when… man, wasn’t that a good time to be alive and doing things?” It seems like, once those things have happened, it’s time to move on and do other things that you’re not allowed to be nostalgic about, either.

For example, do I miss being a teenager? Yeah, sometimes I do. I miss life when it was less complicated. I miss not having it all figured out and having the freedom to be anything I wanted to be (except, like, a doctor or something, because I’m pretty sure you need more than a 67 in biology to be allowed to cut people up).

2013 was a year of figuring out what the rest of my life is going to look like. I know what I’m going to do and who I’m going to do it with. I have a plan. I have goals. Hell, I even have finances now, like I’m some kind of grown-up or something. When did that happen? Last I checked, I was a twenty-something just trying to get through university without having another mental breakdown. Then I looked up, realized I was going to graduate in four months and plan out what was going to happen after that, and discovered I was actually (however mildly) prepared to cope with it.

But this isn’t about life. It’s about movies.

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Year-End Review

“Hi.”

As I looked back at 2013, I came upon the realization that this may be the last truly strange numerical year of my life.  Like the year 1999, like the film 2001 and like the City on the Edge of Forever, the peaks and valleys of the construct we call “time” hinges on sticking points.  As a species, we look for meaning in all things, we crave it.  Moving forward, ascribing meaning to moments that would otherwise have none but for their place in the passage of then to now.  Sweet 16’s.  Twenty-fifth anniversaries.  Centennial celebrations.  To me, 2013 is just one of those years — it once felt remote, far in the future; built on numbers, like ‘2000’ and ‘13’, that inherently evoke meanings of their own — it tickles the mind in just the right way.  Twenty-thirteen… God, what a strange year to be alive.

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