Decade in Review

Okay this time it's my last post of the decade!

I understand why people are cynical about New Year's. All the hype about resolutions and fresh starts and tired old jokes about "I haven't seen you since last year" or whatever. And I get that it's not necessarily a good thing to subscribe to the idea that the new year should be when you decide to make a major change in your life. Plus, it's not like deciding to cut out sugar or exercise every day all of a sudden is really a good way to build new habits into your life.

But I don't know, I can't help but make a resolution or 10 every year. I can't help but feel a little excited about what a new year could mean.

I like New Year's mostly because it's a good time to reflect on how things have been going and where I would like to take things in the future, life and self-wise. And this is the end of the 2010s! Our formative years. We went from being elementary schoolers to teenagers to adults in this decade! I don't know that feels pretty significant to me and I definitely look back on the 2010s with that mixture of nostalgia and warmth and embarrassment and sadness that I associate with my entire adolescence so far (we still count as adolescents right? Please?)

Anyway, I want to frame this post a little like my playlist (thank you guys for contributing! If you have any friends who you want to send it do, I would be very grateful! I've liked seeing what people have added so far!). So basically I'm going to do some favorites from the past decade - and to make sure it's not too long, I'll just do 3 things for each. These are not definitive favorites, just some things that I liked this decade. And generally I'm doing one thing from my tween/middle school years, one from teen/high school years, and one from my adult/college years.

Music:

Don't Look Back in Anger - Oasis: Okay this song might technically be from the previous decade, because I got really into the music on the Rock Band video game me and my siblings got for Christmas one year. I think that game shaped my taste in music more than anything, and I completely fell in love with this song. This album (What's the Story, Morning Glory?) was the first physical album I remember owning - it was also a Christmas gift and I used to sit next to my little Emerson CD player with the liner notes out, following along with the lyrics. I didn't listen to a ton of Oasis other than that (I wasn't allowed to use Youtube at the time, so I only really heard new music from the radio or iTunes), but this album has a very special place in my heart.

Thanks fr The Memories - Fall Out Boy: This one is actually not on my playlist whoops. I was thinking about it today so I decided to include it here. I used to watch Death Note AMVs religiously once I got an iPod Touch and I was allowed to use YouTube in middle school. I still remember the AMV with this song and it totally blew my little mind.

The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out to Get Us! - Sufjan Stevens: Since I did two songs from middle school, here's a song I've loved a lot in both high school and college. Naoni said I don't talk about Sufjan Stevens that much but he's my all-time favorite artist still and this might be my all-time favorite song. I don't really know how to explain why but this song is one of the most affecting pieces of music for me.

Books:

Harry Potter Series: Obligatory. I was such a Potterinator in middle school, it must be said. I was super into MuggleNet, Pottermore, A Very Potter Musical, Potter Puppet Pals, you name it. A few days ago I was in a Wendy's with my sister and our friend and this middle school-aged girl complimented my badger socks and asked if I was a Hufflepuff. I said, "heck yeah," and she just said "Slytherclaw" in response and kind of shyly slinked away. I felt a big identification with that girl in that moment and it really made my whole day.

A Tale For the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki: I love this book!! So much!! I want to reread it because it keeps coming up in my life a lot recently. The professor teaches at Smith and my friend said she's really nice, because she met with her once to talk about creative writing stuff. I read it during a really rough week the summer between my junior and senior year and it just hit me in such a special way. This book is always going to have a really special place in my heart I don't even know how to begin to explain the plot but I would highly recommend it.

Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle: This is a recent favorite book of mine. I read it for the first time right before starting college I think. It's a pretty sad read, about a guy who survives a life-threatening injury but is left with severe facial scarring/disfigurement, and he makes his income by creating a board game that you play through the mail. It's a choose-your-own adventure so people send in their next moves to him via letter and he responds with what happens in the universe of the game. I really love this book, I'm bad at explaining why things mean a lot to me I'm realizing but yeah. This book makes me cry every time I read it, and sometimes when I'm feeling a certain kind of way I just reread this same passage because I know it'll help me get my feelings out.

Poems:

Montauk - Sarah Kay: I got really into slam poetry videos in middle school (Button Poetry what's up) and Sarah Kay's work specifically. Her poetry book No Matter the Wreckage was probably the first book of poetry I ever bought or read all the way through. And this poem made me want to visit Montauk beach so badly. At that age the world felt so big and I felt like I would never feel at home in it. There's this line in the poem that's like "I wonder if I will ever be a woman like that" and I think that's how I felt when I watched Sarah Kay or other poets perform. Like would I ever be a person with stories of my own to tell. It's funny to read it back now.

It's also just a great poem. It feels pretty funny reading it now, now a whole lot closer to twenty-two years old.

Boot Theory - Richard Siken: Then in high school I started reading a lot of "Tumblr poetry" and Richard Siken was very popular. I still love his writing a lot, and his book Crush meant so much to me in ways that I didn't even know how to express at the time. It's so funny, looking back I think I compartmentalized my relationship to the media so much when I was younger. Like now I can think of how and why Siken's writing would resonate with me, but at the time I felt like I was just reading about someone else's experiences and I didn't actively connect it to how I was feeling at the time, though obviously I did.

Anyway that's probably a little too personal for this blog post - my favorite line of poetry from possibly ever is "A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river

                    but then he’s still left

with the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away

                                                                        but then he’s still left with his hands.”

The Orange - Wendy Cope: This is the poem I read now, when things feel like too much.

Movies:

Hugo (dir. Martin Scorsese): This movie is the reason I love movies. Before I watched Hugo, I found most movies too long and not interesting enough to hold my attention span. Hugo completely transfixed me, and I fell in love with all the references to Georges Melies and the early years of film production. I probably wouldn't even be pursuing my major or anything in the way I am if it weren't for this film.

Moonlight (dir. Barry Jenkins): This came out senior year of high school. It was the first year I watched the Oscars and I was very passionately invested in the La La Land vs. Moonlight debate. I had my money on Moonlight. After they announced La La Land for Best Picture I went upstairs to get ready for bed, then my mom started to call me down because "something was happening" and basically that's how I watched the entire Oscars that year and yet still missed the most famous mishap in Oscars history.

This film made me realize how visually stunning even a realistic story could be. It also made me realize how sometimes you don't need words to communicate even the most emotionally powerful of ideas.

Ladybird (dir. Greta Gerwig): I know some readers of this blog don't love this movie. But I've been rereading Catcher in the Rye recently, and there's that line about how sometimes you read a book and you feel like you wish the author was a terrific friend of yours you could call up whenever you wanted. That's how this movie made me feel.

Moments:

N/A: I'm really racking my brain to think of a memory I enjoyed in middle school and...yikes. In lieu of that, one time me and my friends tried to come up with an elaborate LARP world and it was a colossal mess that led to many hurt feelings and thankfully never got off the ground. My friend's mom is a really good chef and all around kind person and we did used to go to her house every Friday to eat pizza and hang out with a ton of kids mostly from the band program and I really like their family in general so I guess that was a good memory.

High School Graduation: Okay this sounds, like, sarcastic or something but it's not! I had a ton of fun with all the senior year traditions in high school. I loved going to my senior prom and graduation and all that. Also I had to give speeches at our academic banquet about people in our class and after I was done a bunch of people came up to me and were like: wow that was so funny! It was honestly a really proud moment for me. And I'm really proud of the speech I gave at my high school graduation. I was really cringey in high school too but I had a really pleasant end to my senior year.

Montreal Trip 2019: I'm really glad I got to go to Montreal with some of you guys. It was a rough start to the week for me and we all know the trip had its ups and downs but honestly some of my favorite memories of this past year were made on that trip. I still think about that samurai sword photoshoot sometimes and I can't help but smile. Also my sister recently asked me what my favorite place I went to this year was and, as much as I had a really incredible time in Japan, I think Montreal was definitely my favorite because I got to spend the whole time with some great pals. Plus it spawned the actual greatest film of all time.

Okay this ended up being way longer than expected! Happy New Year though! Do you guys have resolutions or anything, or any decade/year favorites? I'm thinking up some resolutions but I haven' committed to anything yet so I'm not ready to share...but please share yours!