It's gonna take a while to get used to writing the date in the corner of my papers

Jiminy cracker it's finally here.

First of all, sorry for being absent for just all of December and most of November that was;;;; uncool. But times got tough and school was rough but with less than a week left of vacation before heading back there I wanted to make sure I started 2020 off on the right foot. This year has a lot in store, I'm graduating high school, (hopefully) going to start university which may or may not involve finding new living arrangements. I'm excited and full of ideas but also I still have physics assignments due...last year and that sucks. And once school starts up again, it's TESTS, and SUMMATIVES and EXAMS so juggling all that is gonna be a lot. It's gonna be a lot. And even though the future is unclear, here we are, smack dab in the middle of it.

2019 was a whack year. And thinking about all that happened, even though bad things did, walking into 2020 it was hard to dwell on all the awful stuff when there were so many cool things that happened too. Overnight trips? Discovering new artists to listen to? A favourite song? Special events and festivals? YouTube channels that changed your life? New friends? Epiphanies? This was a year chock full of all these things. So I'm grateful, so, so grateful for every bit of it.

And we made it guys. We made it into a new year, a new decade! We stand here today with a determination in our eyes that says "we'll keep going until reality is better than our dreams." I dunno, I felt like waxing poetic.

Anyways, I recently caught wind that I have a friend who may or may not be super good at internet stalking and so this whole haven may soon be discovered by people I know in real life. Don't worry, I don't think I'll have to shut this down, there's some cringey stuff on here but I don't believe there's anything that bad that could ruin my future and be used for blackmail (famous last words). But just in case I'll probably go through some of my old posts and remove ones that aren't really relevant or that are just...awful writing and awful content, just pure awfulness.

With that out of the way, and with 49 minutes left of January 1st, 2020, here's what I want to share with you today:

I learned two big things in 2019.

One was from the book "The Reason I Jump" by Naoka Higashida, and reaffirmed by Jason Mraz's song "I Won't Give Up". "The Reason I Jump" was a 2007 biography written by a thirteen year old Naoka Higashida. Higashida has autism, and this book was his expression to the world about just what goes on in his head. And there was a line that never left me since reading that book: Please don't give up on us. He writes it many times in response to many situations and questions and that's when I realized it. Above all things, people don't want to be given up on. People need someone to believe in them in order to go on. If my sister, if my friends, if my parents had ever told me "I'm finished, I can't handle you anymore", if they had ever walked away, then...I don't know where I might be right now. I want to make sure people always have the support they need, that they have someone cheering them on, that they have not and will not given up on. Because feeling helpless, feeling burdensome, being made to feel like you're not worth the effort...no one should have to feel like that. And in whatever way we can, don't think that you don't have the capacity to do something about it. So many times I've turned a blind eye, so many times, pulling pitiful excuses out of my pocket, I've ignored and blamed and cried wondering why the world was getting so bad and doing nothing about it. But we can do something about it. And I think that something is living selflessly. Because it's not about us. And if we can realize just how valuable every human being is, we are all worthy and fighting and living everyday, that we're all poems in this epic called Life, than maybe we'll finally start to see something change.

Two was from a YouTube video titled "Joe Pera Talks You To Sleep" (there was a post linking this video a couple months ago). In a part near the beginning of the video, Mr. Pera starts talking about Stephen Hawking. A brilliant scientist, cosmologist, thinker, possibly the greatest of our time, he overcame so much adversity and came to know and question so much about the universe and the way it was. Granted, most of my knowledge on his life comes from the movie "The Theory of Everything" so I'm bound to get some stuff wrong but here me out. His first wife, Jane, despite all the struggles, loved him dearly and cared for him a long time, 30 years they were together. But it's no secret Mr. Hawking did not remain faithful to her. Joe Pera shares his thoughts on this, that while not trying to defend Hawking's actions, if you think about it from his perspective:

"He spends all day thinking about the universe and how big it is. How out star, the sun, is just one of dozens of stars in the galaxy, which is one of dozens of galaxies in the known universe, all set against handfuls and handfuls of time. If one guy cheats on his wife, what''s the big deal? Thinking further down the same line of thought however, if we're so tiny and insignificant, if you're able to find one person in the entire universe who cares about you, why would you want to disappoint them?"

This has led me to the firm belief that every thought has more than one conclusion. That hope is not dead to logic and that if you stop in the painful, lonely truths that are nonetheless truths, it means turning your back to the beautiful ones. Every thoughts is a double edged sword, thoughts are hard to control and harder to maintain. But the reward for thought is wisdom, and the reward for wisdom is life. I know that we fight our thoughts but if we teach ourselves that we can fight back then we can persevere.

I just know it.

So here's to 2019, for the lessons it taught me, for these are not all. Thank you for everyone who's been with me all this way and those who I've yet to meet. For the highs and lows and for all the middle grounds I've trodden. Here's to hoping I can wake up on time tomorrow morning.

Good night and stay saltful.

- r.k.