Day 181: Exhale

The jetty today

In two days I will have been blogging everyday for 183 days, which will be exactly my half-way point in the 365 project. It will also be winter solstice. The big wheel is turning and it is a gift to have the next two days to start reflecting about this big turn and the new year arriving- before it does.

On Day 78 (Back to Everything) at the end of my post I wrote, "...what fun it will be to look back in a couple of months and see how far we have all come in such a short amount of time- with everything." Well, it feels as though time has just opened up quite expansively in the last 24 hours and this kind of reflection can now begin to be possible. The "couple of months" that I referred to back in September ended yesterday with the conclusion of the first Extreme Media Studies course, Japanese Intro II, the launch of the first EMS web-exhibition, and with our departure from New York for the next several weeks. I felt a great sense of elation and after I took my final yesterday- and could actually start to comprehend that so many projects that have been in process for months- are now actually "complete". The closure induced a Proustian string of flashbacks to earlier in the semester... one was of me trying to memorize a riddle (that helps one to remember how to conjugate Japanese verbs) while our plane was landing in Reno, NV for three days of live-blogging (this was a definite highlight)... another involved the tour of the Nevada Test site (most definitely the most traumatic)...and others included visits with family over Thanksgiving and times with friends (such as Kevin dressed as a Yedi on Halloween while running a 16mm projector). It has been a big semester and even bigger year (they always are) but it does feel necessary to slow down, pause and let go of what didn't work/out and starting welcoming a new year and the new beginnings on the near horizon.