My Favorite Time of Year

Merry Christmas! 

This time of year is most definitely my favorite. It's a time when the dust from a year's worth of work and play and experiences settles down, leaving a vacuum of space and time for reflection. In Boston, it's always cold by late December. While a layer of frost physically covers the ground, a layer of frost almost freezes of momentum of time and stops it in its tracks. So as the New Year approaches and as I enjoy the very last few hours of this Christmas Day, I reflect on the passing year. 

Our tree this year :)

In one word: tumultuous. This has been a tumultuous year. 

The world continues to struggle with COVID-19 on a daily basis and the new variant Omicron is driving a new surge in infections. This has driven worldwide repercussions. While schools and businesses were open for some, this new strain of the virus is threatening to shut down everything once again. 

There have been political and ideological tensions between the East and the West, particularly between the US and China. These tensions threaten to produce global effects as other countries take sides and each side insists on winning. 

Joe Biden became President of the US this and his first year so far has marked tremendous amounts of government stimulus spending. His signature Build Back Better plan, on which he campaigned, did not pass the Senate vote earlier this week. This has threatened to pull apart Congress, pitting the left against the right. 

2021 was also a tumultuous year for me personally. It was the year I applied to college. It was a time that left me stressed out and in retrospect, left me in one of the darkest periods of my life. It was a milestone that I couldn't seem to overcome and somehow did. But this year, my family lost a very important member of the family: our dear cat BeiBei. We still think about her every day and I still find myself growing emotional some nights thinking about her. But I know she's in a better place now. 

While 2021 started out on a rough foot for me, with high school graduation, college apps, and BeiBei's passing, I feel as if I've regained some footing. Admittedly, I felt lost after high school, unsure whether I could stay true to my values and beliefs. But over that barrier now and in a new milestone of my life, I feel as if I have found some direction. The dust that fogged my vision and battered my self-confidence seems to have settled a bit.  

Knowing this year, I'm sure it has more to show us in the last 5 days and I'm prepared to embrace whatever is thrown at us. The erraticness of our world is real. But right now, on this cold, wet Christmas Day, I'm happy. Just relaxing at home, at peace, with little on my plate for the first time in a long time. 

Hello from the other side

Wow. It's quite a surprise to find myself back here. I've taken some time off from blogging these past few months. My last few posts occurred around the time I graduated from high school in early June. It's now December 3rd. I turned a year older two days ago, I'm about to finish my first semester of college, I'm dating someone who's a great source of companionship, and frankly, my life has metamorphosized into something I wouldn't have recognized a few months ago. I even use a PC now!

After some months off from blogging, I must say that I've missed this place. My goal in blogging on Revelation of the Revolution is to keep a digital journal, a diary, of my life. And one of the most rewarding parts of this diary keeping is re-reading what I wrote in the past. Reliving the thoughts, the questions, and the events that I've catalogued so carefully all these years is something that I'm grateful to be able to do thanks to this space. So I find myself here once again to continue that documentation so that the me in ten years doesn't forget all the precious moments these days. 

Perhaps one of the things I'm most grateful for these days is that I finally feel I've found myself fitting in socially in college. After high school, I frankly wasn't sure whether my social struggles were a "me" problem or a fit problem. And since coming here, I've made more friends than I did in my four years of high school and I'm rarely ever alone. I go out occasionally (probably not as much as I could), I have friends in my dorm on various floors, I feel like I can strike a conversation with anyone, and I don't feel like the idea of me is stigmatized. I've made friends with the people in my dorm, club tennis, and the pre-professional student investment club I joined. And these communities have been a healthy, much-needed addition to my life that, while better than high school, is still centred around my studies. 

The city is also something else I'm adjusting to. Having grown up in the suburbs and gone to boarding school in an even more rural town, Washington DC has been quite a change for me. Coming here has made me appreciate the peace and solemnity of my neighborhood back home. But there are some perks that I've quite enjoyed about living in the city. First, the city never sleeps. And this isn't even NYC. It seems that there are always people on the streets when I'm awake. Whenever I go on walks, I find myself window shopping, going to new restaurants, browsing boutique stores, and visiting cool historic sites. In fact, I've already visited all the historic houses in the Georgetown neighborhood since they're all within walking distance from campus. What an amazing perk about the city. Everything is just here at my fingertips waiting to be explored. But another thing I love about the city is the food. Even the most random restaurant in DC seems to top an upper echelon restaurant back home. So during the weekends, I make time to go out and try new restaurants.

Most importantly, as I take my first few steps into this new chapter of my life, I'm starting to see things less as a cause and effect. This change is the result of a paradigm shift in the way I few my time and the outcomes of events. In high school, I felt like I was constantly working towards one goal: getting into college. The problem was that I viewed everything as having a direct effect on that ultimate goal. Doing poorly on one test equaled not getting into college. Taking a course that I was interested in but not super relevant to what I wanted to study meant diminishing my chances of getting into college. Socializing meant not doing enough work which meant obstructing my shots towards my goal. I incorrectly viewed doing anything that didn't contribute to my resume as a waste of time and as a result, I didn't spend enough time cultivating areas of myself besides my intellect.

I feel like a different person in this community, in this new city, and in this new phase of my life. I spend time going to my favorite group fitness class because I know that even though I'm not studying during those minutes, it'll make me more productive for the rest of the day. I have permitted myself to open up to another person and cultivate the emotional, romantic side of me, which has unexpectedly taught me how to cope with emotions and how to feel innately human. I spend time socializing with people after classes and clubs rather than hurrying off to my next commitment because I've realized that the people I meet by virtue of being members of the same community are actually my friends, not just peers. I watched under a dozen movies while school was in session through four years of high school because I couldn't allow myself to relax. So yes, these days I allow myself to relax and have fun, which has actually shown me the power in taking a break when it's earned. As I reflect on my college experience thus far as my first semester comes to an end, I must say that all of these aspects of my life today have made me a happier and more fulfilled person. And for that, I'm grateful.