2006 in Review

2006 was a year of change and transition for me, so it was pretty much doomed from the beginning.

Highlights include, but are not limited to:

*My final semester of college, a ridiculous affair in which I took too many credits, continually stressed out, rarely saw friends and did the bare minimum of effort in my organizations. It culminated in April in near-continuous crying episodes to parents and professors and barely graduating, my GPA having taken a severe pummeling for my idiocy.

*Graduation day, where I realized belatedly that maybe I should have been a bit more involved in the academic aspects of college. A day of excessive highs (finally graduating) and lows (everyone crying as they left Framar and realizing that the departure was really the last).

*The entire month of June, as I frantically looked for jobs and tried to decide what the hell to do now. More crying.

*Living in friend's basements for the summer, working temp jobs and looking for apartments in the DC area, having decided to live here because, well, I couldn't think of anywhere else that would be better.

*Finding an apartment where I wanted to live, that wasn't horribly overpriced or about to collapse at any moment.

*Still working as a temp as my place of employment delayed and delayed the decision on whether or not to hire me. Attempted to formulate a backup plan in case I wasn't hired, but could think of nothing better than going back to ye olde food service industry. Tried not to think about it.

*Realizing that I was not going to make friends my own age at work, as it is a mostly middle-aged nonprofit. I am also singularly unsuccessful on the bar/club/twentysomething scene. Begin going down to alma mater on most weekends to save my sanity and to assure myself that some people still do like me.

*Falling prey to an especially severe case of seasonal (or post-collegial) depression as fall ends and winter begins. Become convinced I should be doing something else, something more worthwhile, but what exactly I should be doing remains a mystery. I try to cheer myself up with distractions but any feelings of cheer live a short and unhappy life.

*Becoming more and more paranoid about my lack of social skills. In a particularly deluded occasion, when three different friends/acquaintances do not contact me for a while, I start believing that they now hate me. Later, I find out that one's mother had a malignant tumor and the others were just away for vacations.

*New Year's Eve, the first that I would be drinking and partying on, the previous ones having been spent with the (nonalcoholic) parents. The evening starts off well but quickly disintegrates into a sodden night of self-disgust and negative contemplation. At a bar I refuse to dance with my friends and assorted revelers and instead lean against wall, drinking heavily and wondering at the pointlessness of everything. I begin the new year hangover free and rather sheepish about my previous behavior. The rain does not help things.

In short, 2006 was an utter waste of time. It would have been better spent watching TV series on DVDs, Seinfeld maybe. I probably would have laughed more.