learning 25

Failing, Learning, & Getting Stuck in Jacket-Coats at 25

Day 252: August 20

You failed.

You set out to learn something new each day of your twenty-fifth year, recording the details for the world to know (even though no one asked for this information), and you didn’t do it. Well, I should say, you didn’t record the details as you promised, it’s clear, even if only to you, that you’ve done the learning part.

But you failed to report it. To name it. To translate it into a takeable, buzzfeed-like list. And this bothers you. You think you can still do it. You think that this failure somehow matters to a larger audience. You’re thinking, yes, but…

Yes, but I can still piece it together.

Yes, but I can look at my instagram, my twitter, my facebook, and my email.

Yes, but I can get the details together. I can finish this project. I can catch up on over 200 days of living and learning and wrap it all up in the next 100.

Yes, but why?

Seriously, Dude. What’s your deal here? What is it you’re really learning from the day-to-day operations of your quiet, albeit lovely, life that the world needs to know?

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Online Dating with Walking Pneumonia

Day 32: January 12

Get out of the house for church and brunch, because church always makes you feel better and brunch is delicious. Joke that you have walking pneumonia or something. Notice that people laugh uncomfortably and move their chairs a little further from you than normal.

Overhear a conversation you weren’t supposed to hear. That’s awkward. Remember how challenging life is when you can’t unhear things you’ve heard and you can’t unknow things you now know.

Venture to the coffee shop—by all means, keep spreading your germs—and order without thinking. Laugh when the waiter brings your food: Abita root beer and the only gumbo you’ll accept here. Comfort food. Good ole’ Louisiana comfort food.

Meet up with your trusty friend, because she knows you’re being irrational and she has some non-unknowable things happening in her life, too. Happy hour it up, and use that time to make big life decisions. Like online dating. Yeah. That’s good. Decide that you both need online dating profiles. Invite a trusty man-friend to help with this process, because you know, he’s guy and stuff. He’ll know what to say.

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Dreams Realized, Sorta

Day 28: January 8

Go back to work after a long, long break. It’s exhausting. You’re exhausted. But! check your email at exactly the right time and finally sign up for Baltimore Print Studio’s letter press workshop for February. Get excited. And then get in bed, because Dude, you are still sick.

Translation: Twenty-five is letter pressing. Beautiful, nerdy letter pressing.

____

Day 29: January 9

Take on a new responsibility at work: line up the graduates by shouting their name and telling them where to go. Realize, only as you begin shouting, that you are the worst at pronouncing strangers’ names. Try to compensate by saying, “He-blah-ble-blah over here! And I’m sorry. Really sorry. Don’t worry, I don’t call the names on stage. And congratulations!”

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Going Home: Better Late than Never

Day 19: December 30

Brace yourself. It’s another day with Delta.

But this time, you’re too forlorn to make detailed notes about the experience. Because vacation’s over. It’s time to get back to all those things you’re avoiding back in Baltimore. It’s time to go home. Back to real life.

But remember, that’s joyous! You like Baltimore. (Even if you’ve yet to convince your landlord the value of a dog.)

You drag your feet through the airport like a pouting child, willing your four-hour layover to move quickly. It declines.

In the meantime, you continue with the email and hard drive clean up you’ve been pursuing all week.

You come across a folder labeled “for the blog.” You remember this as the folder you’ve been putting stuff in for the blog. You open it and realize that you’ve been slacking. You haven’t posted any of this stuff. And really, it’s not so much “stuff” as it is “photos that made you laugh.”

Whelp, better late than never, right?

Photo of Baltimore Roads
This is how our lanes are repainted in Baltimore. I’m in the correct part of the “old lane” at a stop light. When I go, I have to jump over to those newly painted lines. Yeah, okay.
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Seven Year Assessment

Day 9: December 20, 2013

Wake up, and remember an email you sent seven years ago. An email you sent to all of your family and friends of the time. Remember it being hilarious! And witty. And all kinds of smart.

Good thing you saved it.

Upon reading the seven-years-ago email, however, you remember significant disappointment. You’ve remembered this email incorrectly.

It’s not hilarious. It’s painfully honest about things you shouldn’t have said aloud much less committed to writing for all your family and friends to read. Luckily, they still think it’s hilarious (but not in the way you wanted it to be).

Write a new letter, because you’re better at it now. (Or at least, you hope.)

Remember the art of editing, and try to save the personal information for your blog and essays (because that seems more appropriate somehow).

Make a list of all the people that matter to you. Get email addresses for as many as you can. Click send.

And then find a typo.

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You’re Killing Me, Smalls

Day 8: December 19, 2013

Enjoy a belated birthday present from a good friend: a trip to the movies to see the Hobbit (spoiler alert: it was amazing).

You are both really bad at the timing thing, so you’re running late. Even so, you decide that you must have popcorn and a coke icee. Because you’re at the movies. And it’s your birthday (sort of). And seeing the Hobbit in IMAX 3D (!!) demands an extra serving of sugar (icee) and a bit of salt to cancel out the sugar (popcorn).

(You’ll want to question this logic at some point, as it is definitely not sound and you are definitely still hypoglycemic, but today is not a day for logic.)

You ask for smalls: small popcorn and icee, please! You say it proudly as if smalls make everything okay. But the girl at the counter gives you pause:

We don’t have small icees, she says, only mediums or larges.

Conundrum: do you explain that these terms—small, medium, large—in this context—containers of deliciously awful syrupy liquid—are relative terms?

She’s staring at you, asking if you want the medium instead?

Your mind goes to sophomore year biology and the terms “hyper-tonic” and “hypo-tonic” and the fact that they can only be used when comparing two things (this also makes you remember your alternating hypoglycemic and hyperglycemic conditions, and you try to remember which way the icee pendulum swings).

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Etymology of Tuesday

Day 6: December 17, 2013

Go to work. Tell someone good morning. Her response will be simple, yet unexpected: you dyed your hair. Say yes, yes you did dye your hair. And that you like it. Because change is good. Everyone needs change some times.

She surprises you again with her response: it’s stark.

Spend the rest of your morning defining the word stark because maybe it doesn’t mean what you thought it meant. (It does.)

Stark—adjective

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