Tuesday, August 30, 2011

2005 and New York justice

At random, pick a year (a bit like they do on FaceBook nowadays) and describe it. Completely unnecessary. It's been done (dredge the archives if you don't believe me). But 2005 was the nightmare year. Perhaps I can make sense of it, pick the raisins out of it?

2005, the year I tried to settle down, albeit with unconventional methods (moving in with one's parents? working as a freelance? building a labyrinth and starting to write?).

A summer in the garden of Eden, dating the prince I was scared of as a 16-year-old and dreamed of as a 31-year-old, a computer and an entry into the blog world would probably be my greatest achievements that year. And, against all odds, I managed to make a few new friends - one who's saved my mental health more than once, one whose creativity and new ideas always inspire and who gave me a jasper bracelet, one who taught me that you can be friends with someone you don't get. At all.

And a new hotel. The most boring one in my working life so far. But it showed me beyond a doubt that the hotel culture is different in Finland. The bonus: a very boozy dinner with all my workmates and bosses and SO worth a summer of feeling like a supermarket check-out.

And it was my annus horribilis. Being back home after several wonderful years abroad, unemployed and forced into the old grid of people's expectations almost crushed me. I got out of the worst of it towards the end of the year.

"Never again a year like 2005!" was a toast I and my best friend made recently. But without it - what an insufferable person I would be. I wouldn't be on the run from New York justice either...

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