forty-eight. [THEME: reflection]

[cabaretlights.livejournal.com]

Narcissistic Cannibal [ft Skrillex & Kill the Noise]
Artist: Korn
Album: The Path of Totality
Year: 2011
♥: Okay, I know. I barely liked Korn in high school, and it makes me feel a little childish to be posting it now. But if nothing else has happened this year, I have become more honest -- with the music I listen to, the people I care about, and myself.

So reflection, on a year.
I felt a shift on December 31st, 2010, almost physically. I went from a perfect year to one that "has come unbound," but not on terms anyone other than myself would see, not really. From the outside, I'm aware that my life is pretty great. This year, quite deeply, I've realized that I have amazing friends and family, a career I love and a grad program that will get me where I want to be, a city I adore and a living situation that rocks, health and hobbies and happiness.

Ah, but.
"Sometimes I hate the life I made."
This year has been rough. It's not that anything specific made it that way, though many events certainly did have an effect. But the issue has been, will always be, what the events signified. What I created out of them. The person I became as a result of reflecting. Where in 2010 I was comfortable with myself, felt secure and confident, despite some serious career questions, 2011 has been one of questioning myself. My decisions: and whether they were decisions at all, or just left over from identity choices I made as a teenager.

I've MADE my life. Good, bad. I realize that now more than ever. The other thing I realize, that I didn't back when Untouchables was Korn's latest endeavour, is that there's no use rationalizing. In high school, I could justify any feeling I had, any action I made. I did it so well it's become unconscious, woven into the acts themselves: I have reasons for everything, my life is a big series of "because"s. 

2011 has no "because."
2011 has been chaos, undirected, unemotional. Beneath whatever surface people perceive of me, I am quiet. Well, that's not quite fair: there have been moments, even weeks at a time, where I feel the way that has taught me to settle for nothing less. But overall, my heart is just quiet. And I can't figure out why. And I hate it. In a way I never have, because there was always a BECAUSE before: sometimes I hate the life I made.
And I question every decision I've made, wondering whether sitting here at 25, I've done things the best possible way for myself. Have I deluded myself? Have I shut doors, opportunities, because of ideas and rationalizations I held to for the wrong reasons?

Let's be honest, since I do that now: Yes. I have. I will keep doing it. I'm in no way unique or singular: everyone does. We fuck ourselves over continuously, then rationalize it after the fact.
But to have felt so surely, so COMPLETELY, that my heart was beating out of its cage, before this year, for so long ------------

Here's the difference between me at 15 and me at 25.
At 15, I rationalized.
At 25, I fight.
"Holding on I'm lost in a haze / Fighting life to the end of my days."

No idea where I'll be at 35. I doubt Korn will still be around. Doubtless I will still be questioning my decisions, but I don't think it's justification to say that that's part of ME. That's who I will always be -- time to accept that. I do not settle. With the life I'm living right now, it might seem like it to an outside perspective, but then, everything is skewed to an outside perspective. I do not sit back and relax, I sit back and reflect, and if I'm not exploding -- as I haven't been -- then I do not settle.

2011 has been hard, but I'm done rationalizing it. 
This song came on, and it's not the Korn I listened to in high school. I loved this song the first time I heard it, loved how it tugged at my heartstrings. It's got some dubstep, catchier hooks, mixed with all that hard rock and frustration.
And I'm not the person I was in high school. So instead of listening to the song and feeling self-righteous, sorry for myself, angry --
I danced to the dubstep,
and I grinned at the lyrics,
and I felt all parts of me ready to fight.
Whether everything is wrong or not:
"Got to bring myself back from the dead."

So bring it, 2012, because I'll settle for nothing less than my own terms.

forty-eight (theme: reflection)

[amethysting.livejournal.com]

New Resolution
Heartless Bastards
Stairs and Elevators
2005

I haven't committed my year-in-review or my look-ahead-to-2012 lists to paper yet, but both have been at the forefront of my mind the past couple of weeks.

A year is a funny thing because, if you're focused on the big events, it may seem like not all that much has happened.  But then I look back on my 5pm_weds posts; the list of books I've read and the quotations I saved (I read Room THIS year?  That means I worked at the library earlier this year!); ramblings in my notebooks, the things I loved (some things are pretty consistent (i.e. Castle was on my list in January, haha) and others are a fleeting memory (i.e. Magiska (March) or "the smell of hose water" (July)) and I can't help but realize that A LOT has happened this year.

I tend to reflect and examine and question things all the time, but looking at a year in its entirety is always interesting.  I like seeing the patterns that emerge...the cycles I get caught up in or the things I keep coming back to.  Even better is realizing all of the ways I have (and haven't) changed.  I'm not the same person I was at the end of December 2010, but that Stephanie-of-the-past isn't a complete stranger either.

I picked this song because reflecting on the past usually results in looking towards the future.  I've always liked the idea of New Year's resolutions--or, not resolutions exactly, but rather that urge to start something new or try something different (sure, you can do this at any point during the course of a year, but there is something about hanging up a new calendar on January 1st that marks a definite...shift).  I've loved this song for a long time.  I am addicted to the sound of those rolling, tumbling drums and those explosions of the cymbals.  They are the perfect musical accompaniment to moving steadily forward with fists clenched.  I love the tone of Erika Wennerstrom's voice; when she shouts, "stagnancy makes me drown/and I really want to live!" I feel stronger. (Aside: I always heard "sadness" and not "stagnancy"...it's funny how you can kind of hear what you want to hear sometimes).  I think I have written so many times about how certain songs become my themes and the lyrics become my mantra.  As I'm working on my looking-ahead-at-2012 list, and reflecting on how far I've come this year, this song will run through my mind on repeat.

"My new resolution is to be
Someone who does not take everything so seriously [...]
My new resolution is to be
Someone who does not care what anyone thinks of me."