Monday, January 12, 2009

Best Laid Plans.

It's a new year, and I feel the need to say something profound. But I don't know what that is. Instead, I'd like to kick off this new year with a plug:

Watch Friday Night Lights. Watch it because it's the best hour of drama out there, the best portrayal of marriage (Eric & Tami Taylor) possibly in the history of television. Watch it for the glimpse it offers into working class life in small town Texas - its ambitions and its hang-ups. Watch it for the inter-workings of faith in the South - sometimes genuine, sometimes not. Watch it for the beauty of awkwardness (Matt Saracen) and the sometimes honorable, often destructive charm of Riggins. Watch it to fall in love with a community as it rallies around its sole bright light and source of entertainment - the Dillon Panthers high school football team. Moving right along..

I've begun this new year with determination. Not the saccharine, resolution wielding kind of determination of years past. Simply, determination.

Determination to not mess it up.
Determination to be more honestly me, and less what I'm supposed to be.

I'm sitting here, typing away on my laptop, drinking tea. Well, inhaling the steam that arises from the tea, as it hasn't yet cooled to a temperature friendly to my tongue. I'm not quite sure what kind of tea this is, only that it's not a) green, b) chamomile, and c) earl gray.

I'm sampling music I don't particularly like. Yet. I feel as though I'm supposed to like it, but it simply hasn't caught yet. Arcade Fire, maybe I'll fall hopelessly in love with you 4 and a half months from now. But right now, I'm still stuck on Rihanna. I may quite possibly be the only San Franciscan not sick of Umbrella.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm kicking off this year not having anything in particular to say, no grand sweeping message to convey. No particular gesture of optimism or despair. I've yet to make a resolution, although the calves could use thinning, and avoiding the emergency room in my 3rd year at Google couldn't hurt (the statistics aren't in my favor for this one). Maybe I don't have to buy the 3.1 dress, even if it's massively discounted. I could actually listen to the podcasts I download, read those books I've left impressively on my shelves for years and years untouched. Jane Eyre & Murakami, for instance. Perhaps I can place less value in accomplishing, but reclaim my old passions. I think I'd like to be able to do the splits again.

I do know one thing though, and I'll leave you with that. If there's one thing I've learned from Coach Taylor and the Dillon Panthers, it's that clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose.

2 comments:

Passionate Eater said...

I definitely need to tune into Friday Night Lights. Your post makes it seem very inspirational, very real, and very watchable. (Very unlike my current favorite shows, Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice.) :(

albert said...

excellent -- i'm a murakami devotee. what of his have you yet to read? i'll be curious to know what you think, esp since murakami's always been thought of more as a guy's writer...