the obligatory new years post

Ben, my friend Chris's live-in boyfriend, said to me New Years Day, after his band performed to an ecstatic crowd the night before, that he'd never played when so many people were singing along to his lyrics, to the point where he couldn't even hear himself singing anymore. I'm staying at their house for the last part of my trip over winter break, so New Years day we all sat around in our pjs in their living room. I asked, "so when you opened your mouth it was like the voice of the crowd was coming out instead of your own?"

"Yeah!" he said and laughed, "it was really weird." Then he shook the Wiimote to attack a fanged mushroom.

He played Mario Galaxy on the Wii all day, I sat around and knitted, Josh (their tenant) was in and out, Chris was hung-over not feeling well and spent most of the day curled up on the couch or in bed. Not the most spectacular of plans. Still, it was the perfect (nearly perfect) way to ring in the new year.

The night before we counted down at the bar, then Ben's band played. Some of the crowd, as with any new year, was looking for a new beginning, for a way out of the normal routine. Women were dressed to the nines and men were much more assertive in their flirtation. I did my best to stay out of it. I was glad, this year, to be able to think "I'm not really available," – the usual social norms, the norms that keep everything balanced, seemed to go out the window, and it's hard enough as it is to keep my footing. So many people looking for an escape, a giant new realization to change the course of their lives. Or just one night of forgetting the inhibitions and risks that keep the status quo the status quo.

But people are back at work this morning, and I'll be back in classes next week. Life plods on, and what happens on New Year's is chalked up to being just ... New Years. But we all, like it or not, stop and think at New Year's about where we are in life, and some of us find we're not so sure we like where we are. This year I realize I'm pretty damn happy.

I've visited four cities on this trip -- Parkersburg, Athens, Columbus, and now Cincinnati, and in each city I found friends and social circles that hardly intersect, little bubbles of communities in which each person is finding ways of fitting into, finding their own optimum distinction. On this trip I am the intersection, I am the one who connects the people in one place to another. In each place, I wonder, if I lived here now, what would my life be? Now, after two weeks on the road, I feel like a nomad, and my life in Bloomington and everyone I know seem so distant, my place in the social structure there seems as if I imagined it. All my friends there are new friends, they only know the version of me that I've been for the past four months. It's a strange, new existence, and I do miss my friends, my old friends, when I'm there.

Still, it's my life now, and I'm looking forward to getting back.