2009: You were my biggest challenge of 2009
At some point in late October,deep in the midst of post-viralness when the most active thing I could do was think, I realised the strangeness of months and years: how could a group of days be so easily categorised as September or This Week or 2009, and how could I spend so much time blaming that month or that year for everything going wrong, when the days, the years, really have no more in common than the sunrise and sunset? It was no more October’s fault that I had been constantly ill than it was the people next door’s, and I wasn’t crying at their front door each night, ruing the day they moved in. So I’m finding myself trying really hard not to blame 2009 for the catalogue of general lousiness that has been 2009, trying hard not to pin my hopes on waking up on January 1st 2010 we a sense of focus and clarity and boundless energy. But if I were to look at 2009 as a whole, to lump the days together into one neat bundle: wow, 2009. You sucked.
The biggest measurable challenge? Easily my dissertation, complete with overambitious, overcritical, underqualified, underhelpful supervisor. No, really, did I ever tell you that story about how she only sent me the first draft feedback at 7pm the night before the dissertation was due in? And how that feedback included a huge list of things she wanted in it that she’d never mentioned before? I cannot let go of the whole thing. Spending six months having to answer to the every whim of a slightly crazy person will do that to you.
The biggest challenge to my faith in the world? Either my purse being stolen (I know. It sounds so… petty.) or the random stranger Waitrose incident. Taken alone – even taken together – these seem like such relatively minor incidents, and you know, I am fine with replacing bank cards and watching bruises subside: I’m both alive and I’m grateful not to be in the headspace that makes attacking people in supermarkets seem like a good idea. But I’m increasingly realising that both incidents eroded something in me: I’m leaving 2009 with much less trust, and most less conviction of the goodness, of the world around me. I’m aware of how overdramatic that sounds, but that person who reaches around me to pick up a loaf of bread? I don’t think I can trust them anymore.
The biggest me-challenge? Trying to find out who to be when uni ended. I left university knowing two things: 1) I didn’t want to be a linguist 2) I didn’t want to jump onto the graduate career treadmill. It turns out that rules out very little and there is still so much hanging in space, undecided. I’m lucky enough to have a marketable enough skill to pay the rent while I work as a (sometimes very) part time freelance web designer, and for someone with no design background whatsoever there have been victories – I somehow managed to brand an awards ceremony, got two very conservative organisations to adopt social media policies, have yet to be arrested for the shoddy filling in of a tax return, and I’m currently disproportionately excited about being on some Creative Review Twitter lists as an actual designer. [That's just crazy. There are real designers on those lists!] But I don’t know if this is really the direction I want to take, don’t know if this is really what I Want To Do and whether I shouldn’t just go and do what my family suggest and get a “proper job”.
But the biggest challenge of 2009, the one I will look back on and go I can’t believe I did that? Just keeping one foot in front of the other and keeping going. It has been so ridiculously hard at times, but I’m starting to regroup and starting to look forward. You have been a lousy arbitrary collection of unconnected days, 2009, but I’m looking forward to the next lot.
[Note: I wrote this, which is less of an entry and more of a collection of random thoughts, as part of the Best of 2009 Challenge. I'm struggling to find any "bests" this year. I'm just going to go ahead and assume that the next decade can't get worse than the last one.]
Hardcore, but not too hardcore
If you’re wondering, the image is from a copy of the Sunday Times Magazine wherein Mariah Carey describes her music as “hardcore, but not too hardcore.” I love this. It proves you can say anything, and as long as you believe it – even if you are the sort of person so deluded that you want a million white kittens to serenade you as you enter a room – people will print it without questioning. Okay, so it probably helps to be both extremely rich and superbly famous, but if Mariah Carey can claim to be hardcore without anyone so much as raising an eyebrow, I should be able to get away with more.
We’ll refer to it as a blip
Can we just gloss over the distinct lack of anything resembling an update in three months? Awesome.
(Note: moving server seems to have broken most of my links. I’ll discuss this with my webhost until he gets so fed up of me whining he works out what the problem is just to shut me up. I should totally be in the diplomatic corps.)
Pioneers of recycling
Note: I totally recommend watching this while listening to The Sugarhill Gang’s Rapper’s Delight
Actually, Bill Gates is quite cool. Oh. Just me thinking that, then?
Bill Gates may lose out to Steve Jobs in the coolness department, but if the Gates Foundation can eradicate malaria in Africa, do you think the Nobel committee will award the prize to the creator of the MacBook Air?
Songs I Was Obsessed With In 2008
In leiu of an in-depth summary of the year that was 2008 – 366 days of lousiness I would never want to repeat again, if that’s alright with you, future-self-who-has-a-time-machine – the next few posts will be quick, short notes from my year. I’ll spare you the whining, though.
Songs I Was Obsessed With In 2008:
Ben Folds – ‘Cologne’
Ben Folds – ‘Hiroshima’
Wicked Soundtrack – ‘Defying Gravity’
Alphabeat – ‘Fascination’
Coldplay – ‘Viva la Vida’
Girls Aloud – ‘Can’t Speak French’
Keane – ‘Spiralling’
Estelle feat Kanye West – ‘American Boy’
Duffy – ‘Mercy’
The Ting Tings – ‘That’s Not My Name’
Sam Sparro – ‘Black and Gold’
Leona Lewis – ‘Run’
Alesha Dixon – ‘The Boy Does Nothing’
Pink – ‘So What’
In summary: I could pretend to be hip and obscure, but I am anyone’s for a catchy hook and a bit of repetition.
About
Sarah: freelance web designer, fan of kangaroos, cupcakes, Project Runway, stationery, playing one song on repeat for hours on end and anything with a bird on it.Search
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