It's New Year's Eve!

Here's some thoughts about the past year.
I started the year off with Richard III. I don't even remember my character's name; I had three lines and spent most of the process writing poetry backstage. Then I did "Under Milkwood." I played a cranky middle aged woman and a girl who lay in fields and traced lipstick around her breasts. Hah! Then I did the Fantasticks, my mother's favorite musical. For that I had to quit smoking and retrain my voice to hit notes I hope and pray I'll never have to think about hitting again. Following that (or maybe during it?) I wrote a story that simultaneously covered my grandmothers and my dating adventures. Yippee. I found it to be extremely self-indulgent and vowed never to deliberately write a story about my life again.

I ran into some financial trouble and prayed to God "I need money." The same week I was offered 17$ an hour to talk to Korean kids in English. That job lasted until about October. I still keep in touch with the Kim family though. I am blessed to have them in my life.

Then Jenni left for Thailand. I dealt with it by listening to Stevie Wonder's "Place in the Sun," which reminded me that I will have to move on from that phase in my life, but comforted me to, knowing that Jenni and I are running towards the same goal, and that our friendship is eternal. And then I moved out of my apt on Maiden Lane. That hurt. I was attached to that place, and I still miss Ian Trevethan throwing wood chips at the window to be let in. But I signed the lease for the new "Upper Room" that I reside in with Erinn and Elma and am quite pleased with it.

Then there was a roadtrip. Roadtrip? you ask. What Roadtrip? Heh, yeah right. I'm sure you have already heard about it so there's no need to recap (and somewhere in the past entries of this online journal I wrote a pretty amusing list of things I learned from the roadtrip.) But looking at it from this point in time, I see that the trip was probably the biggest trial to my faith I ever faced, but the fact that I still believe shows me that there is a God after all, and it's He's not a mere concoction I have developed to deal with my problems (not a crutch, as I've been accused of this past year by a fine gentleman who obviously cared about me lots.) Oh, but I read Travels with Charley on my roadtrip, and that book made me decide that Steinbeck is my favorite author and that we have a lot in common because we're both messed up, and that I aspire to be him.

Then I went to the campout, which forced me to face some tough stuff in the Fellowship, but it also helped me to rebuild my faith. Then I came home and began to teach the Sermon on the Mount every other week for the teens at NWF Sunday School. I had to do it alone, which was hard at first, but God has really blessed me with that.

For school I took another fiction class and gained some great friends in there. I also stuck with the anti-self-in-the-story pact, and wrote female protagonists who were all 5'11. Oh, and I managed to somehow use three formes ofthe name Ed for characters in a story I wrote about grasshoppers, which still amazes me. I think the writing has improved. I also took a class about the theater business which was pretty unbearable, but I got through.

And then there was Clown Class. In hell, there are lots of clowns. Lots and lots of clowns, and lots of demons telling you that you are a bad clown. And at the far end of hell, an angel comes down and throws whipped cream in your face and lets you watch "Killer Klowns from Outer Space" before allowing you another chance at the world above. There you go, that was the best description of my experience in Clown Class I could come up with.

And then there was playwriting. I'm not comfortable enough with that experience to remember it at this point in time, but I'll just say that I felt like it was a lot of work for nothing, and perhaps if I didn't take Playwriting I could have written better stories in my fiction class, but hey, I'm hard on myself.

Ah, and then, also this year, I entered the wonderful world of databasing grasshoppers and met plenty of entomologists and peeked into the Oh My! drawer to see that there are, indeed, huge-ass insects in this world, but they are mostly from Brazil. So, also, I could name 2003 as the year I decided not to go to Brazil.

I also met Jay and Scott from the Psalters who may be a part of my future year(s?). They offered me an opportunity to be a part of their musical group which sounds more exciting than anything I could have imagined.

So, that's where I'm at now! Overall, God has been pretty damn good to me through it all.