Happy new year, everyone! I'm gonna make up a little game. This is where we all post the highlights, good and bad, of the last year of the 2000s. Just small sentence fragments will do. I want to read all of yours, so think of some of your highlights and post a diary! Let's all take a break from the meta and the commiserating and reflect on all the ups and downs of 2010. Ready? Go!
Getting onstage with BB King.
Going out almost every night.
Hosting Couchsurfers several times a week.
Seeing the Delta Blues in the Delta.
Flying over the oil spill on a C-130.
Watching a lethal injection.
Substitute teaching.
Southern women.
Flirting.
Having my mind blown.
Getting rejected.
Jumping off a cliff with no clothes on.
Singing and playing harmonica in an acoustic delta blues trio.
Couchsurfing on the Gulf Coast.
A music major.
Maintaining eye contact with the governor while asking him questions.
Filing reports for NPR.
Singing "Let's Get It On" in a smoky juke joint to a roomful of 200 drunks at 3 AM.
Housesitting for a ship captain.
Breaking my big toe at the furniture warehouse and moving out of my apartment all on opening night.
Making friends with state legislators.
A powerful man's mistress.
Interviewing a 15 year-old kid who survived a tornado and held his little sisters while they took their last breath.
Slam poetry.
Speaking out against censorship.
Getting fired.
Being unemployed.
Riding my bike around the reservoir.
A teacher.
Wearing a corset, fish nets, and 5-inch heels in front of the entire city.
Press conferences.
Unearthing a feudal society in Humphreys County.
Completing a fiction novel.
Working out at 5 AM with legislators.
T-Model Ford.
Honeyboy Edwards.
Beating the lieutenant governor in a 5k race downtown, taking a quick shower and meeting a date within a 90-minute span.
New Orleans.
Roy's Store.
A surgeon.
Climbing a fire tower in the Delta.
Bouncing at a gay club at night, waiting tables in the morning.
A stripper.
Spoken word versions of Gin and Juice at open mic nights.
Picking up a hitchhiker.
Making the rec list on Daily Kos.
Working three jobs and not being able to pay rent.
Friends coming through for me when I needed them.
Interviewing a sitting Congressman.
My old boss rejecting my unemployment application.
Working out 6 days a week.
Finding the crossroads.
Being single and lonely in a foreign city.
Collecting bumper stickers.
Drum circles.
Lifting the corpse of a 100 year-old.
Damien Marley and Nas performing at 4:20 in the afternoon.
Putting copies of George Bush's memoir in the "True Crime" section.
My favorite childhood pet living to the ripe old age of 18 years.
Saving a friend from suicide.
Molly at the blues club.
Running with no shirt on.
Riding a bike off a pier with a Czech couchsurfer and some high school kids.
Playing with a 15 year-old cello prodigy and his jazz trio at a swanky restaurant.
South Jackson BBQ on Sunday afternoon.
Performing a ten-minute monologue at the end of a play.
Getting my heart broken.
Dumpster diving.
Food stamps.
Playing a drum solo outside amidst flashing lights downtown.
Wearing a burmese python around my neck in Gulfport.
Starting a business.
Partying VIP style with celebrities at a casino on the coast while still finishing a story on time.
Going public to the national media about my firing.
Almost getting robbed on Church street.
Holding a campaign sign in the pouring rain for 12 hours.
Halloween downtown in gold boxer shorts and Chuck Taylors.
Giving a speech at the Scott Sisters rally on the capitol steps.
Canvassing door-to-door for a judicial election.
Drinking PBR onstage during a play.
Making phone calls for the Muscular Dystrophy Association.
Playing soccer in 100-degree heat.
Going to a tea party meeting to capture the crazy.
Unexpectedly playing at an improv show at Eudora Welty's birthplace.
Almost getting punched by a Republican state representative during an interview.
Getting drunk on the roof of the King Edward with a couchsurfer from Arizona.
Shooting a bow and arrow in a stranger's backyard in North Jackson at 5 AM.
Too Short.
Interviewing Vietnamese shrimpers about their livelihoods being ruined by BP's oil spill.
Frequently dancing in public.
Riding bikes in Mississippi snow with Canadian couchsurfers.
Donating platelets.
Winning an AP award.
Being escorted out of my old job by armed security.
French press coffee after staying up for 24 hours and sleeping for two.
Living every last minute out of every last hour out of every last day.
Looking forward to the future.