CCCLVI: Al fin, l'inizio

It's a play on words, as it should be, and an accidental one at that, as the best ones often are. 

Originally I wanted to express "the end, the beginning" in Italian, which should have been "la fine, l'inizio"; but, when I typed what I thought was "the end" (il fino--WRONG!) and fiddled with my memory and the Italian-to-English translator some more (it turns out that noun gender really does make a difference!), instead I came up with "at last, the beginning". Because you know how corny it is when movies like Bridget Jones's Diary (which I love, by the way) end with: 

The End

The Beginning

? Well, I have every desire to be just as corny, if not more, because that would mean I was being myself.

It's the end of a long engagement, perhaps my favourite among all the ones I have ever devoted myself to. I've learned so many things, done lots of soul-searching, shared parts of myself with you that you/I may never have known existed had I not been propelled to continue writing. And I have you, however many you are, to thank for encouraging me to write and expressing an interest in reading. My life is insignificant, or rather, the minutiae are, and if I bored you umpteen times (particularly with mentions of yoga), I promise you that I bored myself at least ten times that. I guess that this age of blogging is in some ways a testament to how human beings continue to reach out for those connections to each other; and the rise in the use of technology, though alienating at times, has also allowed for people like me to find new ways to be present in your life.

I am not a talkative person, nor do I ever think I will be; I'm not the most articulate or interesting; I get swayed by new ideas easily and enthralled by others almost to the point of obsession (for a brief moment at most). I forget what I want to remember and I remember what I want to forget. I can't tell stories and I can't tell lies. I can be moody, I can be neutral; I can be a hermit, I can be your best friend. I care too much about what other people think and I read too much into what they do/do not say. I admire you for at least one of your abilities (almost to the point of jealousy), whether you know about it or not, and sometimes I wish I could be more like you. Other days, I'm glad I'm not. It's just the way the cookie crumbles--and trust me, I will eat that cookie. Unless it's oatmeal raisin.

Given all these things--the way I am, the way I want to be--thank you for being patient with me, for giving me a few minutes of your time through it all: my audition, my first performance in years; my culinary expeditions, my puns; my lazy weekends, my almost sleepless nights. The yoga. Oh, the yoga...!

Last year I lost ten pounds, cut off about 6 inches of hair, and gained in their place a whole lot of perspective. I was spontaneous at times, immobile at others; took a chance on what I thought could become love and got my heart a bit battered; made decisions that led me to where I am right at this moment and where I will be in a little over a month's time. I do not regret a thing, as much as I sometimes feel I do, and all the more, I am happy to have something to look back on, something to depend on as my memory of 2010. 

I'm being melodramatic, I know; but it's hard to say goodbye to something I have become attached to, especially something that has become my emotional outlet. I have come to realize/rediscover how much I love to write; how much I have come to depend on words to translate my thoughts into something concrete. And for a lot of that, I am grateful to my trusty thesaurus to enrich the colour of those words.

I am excited for the future--I always have been--this year in particular because I have decided to do something totally new with my life, and on my own at that. It is an adventure I have been waiting for for an almost unbearable length of time, and I really don't know what to expect. What you can expect, however, is that you will find new life in these pages once again (or at least pages linked to this one). There's no way I will pass up writing about la dolce vita.

Al fin, l'inizio. At last, the beginning.