My Favorite Year
I'm so far behind in this blogging thing, that since I just finished posting the Buffalo Hunt, I still haven't reflected on my year of service with Americorps. It seems weird to be writing about it now that I've been home for so long. When you move so dramatically from one part of your life to the next, the last chapter kind of ends, and you tend not to remember it without concious inention. Does that happen to anyone else?

Well, what I wanted to say - and I know it's what I wanted to say at the time since I was thinking about it even before my fabulous goodbye party in Moorhead - is that, Has anyone seen the musical My Favorite Year? I saw a community theatre production of it once and what made the biggest impression on me was that my choir director cast himself as the lead, and he had to kiss an actress who was a junior! Yeck!

But what made the second biggest impression on me was that the main character begins the show by saying something along the lines of "this is a show about my favorite year. Not the year I had the most success or made the mose money, but my favorite year."

That's how I feel about my time in Moorhead. It was definately the year I met the most people at one time, made the most friends at one time (face it, making friends in college is easy. How many of you guys did I meet because we sat next to each other in class or lived on the same floor?) and made the most interesting connections in an interesting community away from home.

Moving to a new community you know nothing about for a job you know little about to work with no one you know - doesn't work out for everybody. But for me it was a great experience and I learned probably the most I've ever learned - and I can honestly say I'm not exactly the same person I was before.

I'm trying to describe all this by using less than stellar descriptors like "great experience" and "learned a lot" so I don't think I'm doing it justice. If I think of anything else radically intelligent to say, I'm sure I'll post it on here, but I wouldn't expect too much.

Also I haven't kept track of how many postings I've made here, and I know it's probably less than 100 - I haven't yet reached 1 year of blogging but I've noticed some of my early entries HAVE BEEN EATEN BY THE INTERNET! I find this distressing because I thought once something was posted it was - you know- permanent. Or at least it would be archived somewhere somewhat permanently so I could go back and read it in the years to come while I'm in the Peace Corps, to say nothing of showing my grandkids how the Academy Award winning film Brokeback Mountain was so wildly anticipated ... by me. (notice, I had to say Academy Award winning. You like that?)

So I guess this is an entry that is a half reflection on the past, half staying in tune with the present, because once it's over - it's gone, baby. All you have is what you learned and who you choose to be as you are shaped by your experiences. Make the most of it.