When September Ends

The passing of time is a really peculiar thing. An event can feel both very recent and very distant all at once. Sometimes a song or a place or even a breeze at a certain temperature will throw me right back to a previous point in my life. It is usually a happy time but sometimes it's sad or just weird. The past is constructed though our own perspective on the current and the way we piece together what we think is the past.

I remember this girl in high school was grounded for a month or so because she got in trouble with the cops. The text of her aim buddy profile read "wake me up when September ends". These are Greenday lyrics. She simply meant that she was grounded through September and basically to contact her to hang out after that. Whenever I hear that song, which isn't often, it sends me back to the fall of 2005. Weird vulnerabilities, listening to things like Greenday, and a plethora of other activities associated with one's 15th year.

September has always been for some reason a strangely nostalgic month for me. It probably started in that 15th year with this hard reference point of that Greenday song. It may be that is when I started high school and that is when things started to seem like they mattered more. Maybe I can reference back to middle school September for the football games, but before that seasons just feel like "youth" nothing definitive apart from summer vacation.

Reflecting on Septembers past I wondered, what will forever mark September 2013 for me?

September kicked off in Dallas with a huge Labor Day party in Dallas at our friend Haley's ranch house.

My best friend turned 24, which means that very soon I will also turn 24. The idea of 24 almost feels old but it even more so seems incredibly young and that is beautiful. It is still the youngest of times. These years are mine.

I think I blinked twice and Caroline and I were already in Chile. I am still reminiscing on the whole experience  and will dedicate an entire post as soon as I am able to collect my thoughts and pictures and throw them down here.

Drake's new album NWTS dropped on September 24. The news of this album is by no means supposed to compete with the trips I have taken or the times I have spent with friends this month. It does though, serve to remind me how quickly time passes. I remember waiting in anticipation in October of 2011 for Take Care to drop. The weather was cool and I remember walking back from the business school to my apartment. I remember so clearly the anticipation for the album, the the holidays, for the nearing end of my senior year, etc.

I downloaded  ios7. A new iPhone operating system also seems highly inconsequential. My phone feels new now, so that makes me happy.

The Breaking Bad finale was last night. I haven't listened to much discussion on the episode, but I liked it. My questions were answered. Walt died like I knew he had to and he did it in the most caring way possible. He told Jesse to end it all but really gave Jesse the opportunity to walk away. I now think that the songs "Crystal Blue Persuasion" and "Baby Blue" will always sound a little different to me.

September 11, 2013

Yesterday I was thinking how much things change from year to year.

Today at work someone asked if we all remembered where we were that September morning when the plane hit the first tower. I was young, but of course I remember. I was at my breakfast table eating cereal preparing for another day of 6th grade. I was mostly unaffected by the event due to spatial separation from New York, a lack of understanding of what terrorism truly was, and the fact that I had no friends or family for whom I feared their death.

Twelve years later much has changed. I have seen a lot more of the world and have many more people in many more places who I would worry about if disaster were to strike in any country or city. I have walked the streets of New York. I have seen Ground Zero and the partial construction of the new memorial tower. I have worked on the 62nd floor of a building and felt and unnerving pinch in my stomach at the thought of a plane crashing into a lower floor and knowing that there would be absolutely no escape route.

I read Extremely Loud and Incredibly close last year, which I highly recommend. No other book has ever extracted so many tears from my eyes. Months later I watched the film on an airplane with the same reaction. Not only is is a story about the attacks on 9/11 but it is a story about family, about childhood, about coping with loss, about getting through things, and eventually about moving on.

Today I think of those who lost their lives. In honor and respect, I weep for the individuals and what they went through those minutes or hours that the towers were hit, filled with smoke and flames and fell. I pray for their families who searched for their loved ones, for those who found them and especially for those who were never able to speak to their friends and family one last time.

I almost think that it is human nature to take life for granted, but when I rethink this statement, maybe it is just that way for the privileged. There has never been a day that I have opened my eyes and for any specific reason thought that I shall not make it through the day. September 11, 2011 goes to show that events occur out of the norm that can bring your life to unexpected end. This seems unfair and unfortunate, but at least every other day you wake up essentially without worries.

It is important to keep others in mind. There are millions of people who wake up with the goal of surviving the day. Whether this is due to war in their country, an unstable and corrupt government, a lack of clean water, a lack of shelter, anything, there is the fear that they may not live to see another sunrise.

You are blessed to have access to power, a computer and the ability to read this blog.  You are blessed to have learned to read and write. You are blessed to not only be able to eat lunch, but to have a selection of 45 different sandwich toppings, and to not have to think about throwing away the half that you don't want. You are blessed to be alive. Never take that for granted.

The Urgency of Life and Lists

I have been drafting a list of things I need to do.

Things I need to do today.

Things I need to do this week.

Things I need to do before Chile.

Things I need to do before the end of 2013.

Things I need to do in the next few years.

Things I need to do before and after I retire.

Books I need to read.

Posts I need to write.

Movies I want to see or see again.

Sometimes I get a little caught up in the lists and figuring it out and buying new notebooks and nicer pens to keep my lists in, then worrying about the fact that I have forgotten something or that I can't read my handwriting, or haven't left enough room in the left hand column to make notes or mark completion, and then I just think that it is just nice enough to have lists and the important thing isn't the physical list, but moving forward and marking things off the list.