2010

I thought a lot about posting a 2010-recap picture post, but I don't think I'll end up doing one b/c I'm too lazy to find pictures and post them =P Hahaha... But I do want to write a bit on 2010, since it was a pretty monumental year for me, and I feel I owe it to my future self to write something about this year...

2010 was probably hands down one of the hardest years of my life thus far. Granted, my three months of 2009 in Taiwan were pretty miserable and lonely, but I don't think I cried as much or was as unhappy in my life as I was in 2010. On the upside though, through those struggles, I learned how to be resilient and developed a pretty high tolerance for pain. To make an analogy -- it's like when I burn myself (which happened a lot a lot a lot my first few weeks at work). My first major burn happened when the espresso machine exploded on me with 29384-degree scalding espresso right before service started; and let me tell you -- it was t e r r i b l e. My hand had a blister the size of a small animal and my confidence and composure were completely and utterly shaken -- all in the midst of being new to a station and having 5 different people yelling at me for doing everything wrong. But from that moment on, every next burn I got, even if it really hurt, just didn't seem nearly as bad when compared to my first huge espresso burn. It was like declining marginal pain, to borrow from an economics term.

And so it is with life. Early 2010 was rough, yos. But I got over it, shed the tears I needed to, and moved on. Then mid-end 2010 was rough, too. But I already had experience with sucky situations. Like when I get a burn, I know that though it hurts like crazy in the moment, it will eventually heal after it goes through all the stages of nasty puss oozing and skin peeling. In the end, all that remains will be a tiny scar, maybe to remind me that it did impact my life. (And who knows, maybe with enough Vitamin E oil and scar cream, the scars will completely disappear!) And it's like that with life, too. It hurts and it sucks at times, but eventually, things will get better.

There is the faintest shadow on my hand from that espresso burn nearly 3.5 months ago, and hopefully one day it will blend back to match the color of the rest of my hand. And one day, maybe the scars in my heart from everything this past year will no longer be scars and my heart will return back to its original state. But regardless of whether they do or not, I do know that I have come out of 2010 a stronger, more resilient person, more ready to take on the challenges that await me in 2011 and beyond, because I know (from a lot of experience at this point) that there's a process for everything, and at the end of the day, it really will all be okay.