willclarke.net

What I did:

• Visited Seattle for the New Year.
• Traveled to Vancouver in the snow.
• Fell in love with a girl.
• Hiked Blood Mountain alone in the frost.
• Celebrated Mardi Gras in New Orleans for the fourth year in a row.
• Hiked in the F.D. Roosevelt Park with my dad.
• UrbanHiked all over Atlanta.
• Quit my job after 3 years.
• Learned Objective-C.
• Bought a ton of bike gear.
• Biked the Shenandoah National Park.
• Biked the C&O Towpath to DC.
• Visited the Smithsonian Museums of American History, Natural History, the National Art Gallery, and the National Zoo.
• Helped Mary study chemistry in Baltimore.
• Biked to New York.
• Met author TJ Jackson Lears; slept in his yard.
• Watched a live taping of the Daily Show.
• Had a mind-blowing experience in Central Park.
• Performed stand-up at an NYC comedy club.
• Took a bus back to Atlanta.
• Crashed on friends’ couches.
• Sold almost all my possessions.
• Found a new job in DC.
• Moved into a row house in Columbia Heights.

What I learned:

• Nice people are everywhere. “Southern hospitality” is a myth - “Universal hospitality” is the reality. Life is hard and if we’re not nice to each other, nothing works.
• The human body is at it’s best when pushed to the brink. If you’re not regularly breathing heavy, you’re not living enough.
• You’re capable of more than you think, if you can put yourself in the situation where failure isn’t the easy way out. Force yourself out of your comfort zone, so you have to fight your way back in.
• The mind loves confirmation - be skeptical, and seek opposing viewpoints.
• Cold weather isn’t so bad. Just wear more clothes.
• The body of human knowledge is like a beach, and in our brain we have, at best, a handful of sand from which we construct our worldview. Don’t be surprised we all disagree from time to time. We’ve got different sand.

I learned a lot, but not enough. Here’s to a happy and fulfilling 2010!