It will take every remaining bit of 2009 to recap the year. There’s 1/6th of it left, I know. If I wait until 2010 then I’ll get behind on recapping THAT year. And lookit: I’m not exactly on top of this stuff. Slow, even. I offer my last blog post, written two months ago, as Exhibit A. Bailiff, please add it to the list of evidence. Who’s that shouting at me from the back of the courtroom? You! You there! Kiss m–

A guy just sat down next to me at Barista. He spoke to me, then looked at my wedding ring. He’s not talking to me anymore.

Yeah, I know. This is shaping up to be disjointed and distracted. I like shiny things.

I’m not going to talk about 2009 in any particular order, because that would require cross-referencing. I don’t have a whole lot of spare time. The reason why I get to sit, sipping a latte, anywhere besides my office at 3pm is because I went to work at 7am. And I didn’t take a lunch break.

There are ZERO shrieking babies at work. There are two of them here. You can’t exactly teach a brand new baby the meaning of quiet, and these babies aren’t screaming because they’re mad.

It’s all swirling around now. The events, the fights, the joys, the losses and gains. So much to say and a lot that needs to be left alone. This isn’t the place to air out the laundry soaked with stinky drama–I want to celebrate the year of massive change and thank the people who rode shotgun through it with me.

Mounted police just trotted by. In 2009 I decided that I would never name my child after a month, a city, or a deity. However, it’s completely okay to give an animal a human name. I wonder what police name their horses?

When I went back to work in January, I was ready. So ready. I wanted an office chair and a computer with a big monitor and good benefits. What came with those items I couldn’t have known to request. I got a big fat lesson in what it means to take care of myself. And I learned a lot about what this “self” thing is.

Look, a story!

Previously, I worked retail. To be good at retail, you have to be what the customer in front of you needs you to be. Doing that for three years, I gradually came to believe that it was my job to be everyone’s mother. When I got back into the office environment I frustrated myself to tears over the fact that no one was taking care of ME as much as I felt I should take care of them. Inside, I pouted, “Don’t I deserve to be treated the way I am treating YOU?”

Then, one of my genius coworkers told me to sit down at a picnic.

“You must expect great things of great people. When you do not treat them like great people, you send the message that you believe they are mediocre people. Are they mediocre people? If not, why do you feel you need to do so much for them?”

YES. Great. People. Don’t. Need. Me. To. Stress. Over. What. I. Perceive. To. Be. Their. Every. Need.

Perceive is the key word there. I was addicted to people relying on me. Stuck on the feeling that they might roll over and DIE without me. Who will remember that ONE thing or BE there to help with that OTHER thing? If not me, then I’ve failed miserably! MUST be me. It can ONLY be me.

Thanks to my genius coworker, in 2009 I became a recovering coddler. In 2009 I stopped expecting to be coddled back. So much pressure lifted. And I got a good start at being a better–GREAT, even–person. Who doesn’t need every little need taken care of, because I’m not mediocre. And who now can trust that other people can be great on their OWN. It took me how many years to realize that? Bailiff, there’s Exhibit B.

I have put up a ton of new pictures. Lately they’re my thing. Pictures and video. My things.

Life can change, for good or ill, very suddenly; a concept that we forget about in our day-to-day hum drum world of routines and jobs and deadlines and appointments. We track our schedules on calendars and make lists of to-dos, all for the sake of slicing our lives into stress-free, bite-sized morsels that are easy to pick up, chew and digest. It’s all about maintaining control; it’s all about looking (and feeling) like we’ve got our shit together. “Why can’t it be simple?” we ask ourselves. So we file our papers, pay our bills on time, and make an extra effort to keep the laundry caught up. But? We’re subconsciously waiting for and dreading the inevitable implosion brought upon by chance and good old fashioned human nature. Agent Smith said that we can’t survive in a world in which predictability and satisfaction are the prevailing conditions of existence. I don’t know what logic that fictional badass was basing his assertion upon, but if he’s right then we’re all devoting a lot of time and energy to the pursuit of denying our essential need (desire?) for chaos.

I can see why we work so hard to postpone the inevitable: Change is tough. In many cases it is downright painful. Depending upon our capacity for coping, we create a personal barrier of a thickness that is directly proportional to our fear of being out of control. But it’s not infallible, and unless you’re God you can’t create an all-encompassing forcefield that will defend against every attack. And why should we? The trials and tribulations of life, though impossible to forsee, are the hammer strokes that shape our personalities, adding value to our individual experiences on Earth.

An important truth I have learned: Regret robs you of the present moment. Sure, quitting my job and enrolling in beauty school was probably a bad idea. It was irresponsible and not thought through very well. But! I can sit and type this with confidence and even joy: I am a better person because I screwed up. Taking a chance, giving myself permission to lose control, caused a chain reaction that is still playing itself out. I realized that the business of beauty is actually not for me and I Freaked! Out! All of my preparation and planning and organizing had betrayed me. Now, I could go on and on about how I’m a new and better Nyco, but I won’t. The point is, I didn’t enroll in beauty school because I wanted to catalyze a life-altering epiphany. Oh, hammer of life, how you swing…

We can go ahead and make a rough sketch of what our days, weeks, months, years should look like. We can save money in various accounts that accrue interest and buy IRAs to prevent our grubby little hands from whittling our cash away. We can decide to have kids by a certain age and eat all the right things to influence our everlasting health. We should keep doing all of those things because they’re a good idea. But, on our way to the bank we should take a left when we should have made a right, trusting that we’ll make our way around to it eventually. Lay out on the anvil and take a hit or two once in awhile. And never forget the camera. No matter how hard we try, we just never know when we’ll wish we had it.