seems like even the most unsentimental of my friends (i'm looking at you, tresler) are indulging in year's end state-of-the-union reflections. so it's a little silly and unnecessary, perhaps, to pretend i haven't been doing the same.
where to begin? 2009 began with me buying my first road bike and ended with me joining a racing team. so far, of course, i've been the weakest and most pathetic member of the team, but i'm going to bust my ass trying to get better until they kick me off.
work is a wellspring of an entirely different sort of challenges. i'm suspicious that i'm the sort of person who needs to feel under the gun and stressed out and at a disadvantage to succeed, in which case i'm going to do great at my job and bicycle racing, but my tmj and the coffee addiction will proceed at a corresponding rate.
i'm also idly entertaining the notion that i'm utterly cursed in love. all the little sparks have fizzled out with varying degrees of heat and light. perhaps more disappointing is how little i care. sure, i've felt flashes of rage and passion and affection, but nothing seemed to stick, and i'm left with this vague disappointment. and of course, like the writer hoffman in the opera tales of hoffman, which was an enormous pleasure to see the day after my birthday, it's not a curse but some inconsistency that exists in my head, or perhaps my heart. i don't want what i want. i don't commit. i want the ones that don't want me. i want the one i can't have. it'll go on that way until dumb luck strikes me on the head or until i resolve the internal conflict.
probably neither will happen in a year, but i'm sure the path will be interesting either way.