Yesterday, I said we’d do more of a year in review…. Because by month is helpful to me, but I don’t really think it always necessarily gives the story in an easy and digestible way.
I’ve said on this blog before that I’m generally trying to strengthen 4 pillars as a foundation of my life.
They are: athleticism, creativity, intelligence, and community. Sometimes I find it hard to balance them/fit ’em all in… So, let’s see how I did with that.
Athleticism: I finished a full marathon (the day after a 10k, even). I did my first stair climb. I did 5 half marathons, an obstacle course run, and even (kind of) another marathon…
(I ended up sort of lost (of course), running around like a – whatever a non-cliche way of saying “chicken with her head cutoff” is)… It basically happened, but I feel iffy about a part in the last half…)
The point is, I averaged about an athletic event every month and a half or so. So, that’s not too shabby…
Creativity: I sang the National Anthem at a few different running events. I finished a project doing 52 performances in 52 weeks. I was booked for my first stand-up comedy gig (…even if I was just one of multiple openers for someone else :-)). I performed in improv theaters on both coasts. And I was an editor on a Jon Stewart-produced show!
I didn’t *feel* like I did a bunch of wildly creative stuff this year, but when I look back at it, it wasn’t so bad.
Intelligence: I mean, I worked for Jon Stewart. No one’s smarter than him. (Okay, fine, some people are probably smarter in some ways… But the point is, he is brilliant.) And obviously, so is Larry. So is basically the entire staff. I was constantly in awe of our writers, producers, researchers, everybody. I felt pretty informed about the world. And I was reeeeeeally proud of the work I was putting into the world. I felt almost like we were kinda making the whole world smarter 😉 (Or at least the many hundreds of thousands of people who watched our show)… And I’m really proud of that.
Community: I did do some volunteer events in New York. I volunteered at a pub crawl for cancer, and at a walk for MS. I volunteered for Hillary Clinton (not in New York, but making phone calls and knocking doors elsewhere). I started as a mentor for a high school student, though admittedly, I wish I’d done more with her. And that is one of my biggest goals of the upcoming year – to do more with her.
I would say community (or maybe intelligence as I don’t have a ton to point to there other than having a great job) were the two pillars most lacking this year…
But. They were there.
The year was obviously a hard year for me and a bit of a mess (which I will talk about tomorrow. It’s easy to get bogged down in feeling like I did nothing… But seeing it laid out like this, it’s like, “No. Stuff got done and that’s nice to see.
And we’ll have one more year-in-review post tomorrow.