A Good Look Back

Seeing as I had a bit of a rough spell a couple weeks ago, I want to end this year on a positive note. So instead of dwelling on something shitty that happened, I want to focus on what has been an otherwise incredible year.

I can say hands down, this has been one of the most incredible and intense years of my life. There are so many things to be grateful for. So I am glad to provide a retrospective on 5 things that people either said to me or did for me that made my year so wonderful.

#5 - The Cab Ride

New Years Day. It’s just after 1 am in Chicago, Illinois. Myself and 2 female friends are celebrating at a bar on the outskirts of the city. After some drinking and much dancing we decide it is time to go. We go to retrieve our coats which quickly turns into the most awful experience involving a coat I have ever been a part of.

We step outside to get cabs along with the 200 other humans, most of them blackout drunk, looking for cabs. We are in a very industrial part of town not necessarily known for its hopping night life. In retrospect, we would have picked a place easier to return from.

It is 0 degrees and I realize my coat, while stylish, is essentially useless against the cold. I am so cold I want to cry frozen tears while laying in the street but that thought freezes in my spinal cord before my body can make it a reality.

I am miserable. I have been cursed at, pushed, shoved, and told by the police that I can’t wait inside for a cab. A guy around my age, let’s call him Tom, is also hopping up and down in the freezing cold asks me where I’m going. I tell him. He tells me he’s headed in the same direction and that since he only has one person with him and I have 2, we should split a cab.

I readily agree with Tom, but my faith in this pact is lacking. If I get a cab and this guy is nearby, of course I will give him a lift, but I know I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to track him down. We are outside for 10 minutes, 20, a half hour. Tom walks further down the street to see if he can hail a cab. I go back inside to check on my friends. I get yelled at by police officers. I go back outside and that’s when I see him.

Hanging out the rear window of a cab is Tom.

Rich, Rich! Over here!

He is waving to me, flagging ME down to get in the cab with him that he has been circling in to find me. I am blown away. I tell him to hang on, I run back inside and grab my friends. We push through the hundreds of frozen drunk idiots and into our cab.

I thank Tom profusely. I thank him out of sheer gratitude to be out of the cold, but I also thank him out of guilt. Because I cannot picture myself circling to track him down. I am embarrassed and ashamed but also grateful. I give him my business card. I tell him to contact me that I need to thank him again.

We make it home and go to bed. I never hear from Tom again.

#4 – The New Job

After years toiling away in positions that I didn’t really believe in, doing things that didn’t really make me happy, I found a job this year that made me believe in my ability to succeed in a corporate environment. Since I was rapidly descending upon the possibility that I might have to become a career tour guide.

I make tons of new friends and as a ridiculously ridiculous awesome bonus, for my second staged play, my company purchases 40 tickets for employees to go to my show. I am blown away. They attend. They clap. They support me. I remain blown away.

#3 - Miami

Random Girl: Who ARE you?
Rich: Who are YOU?
Random Girl: Everybody here knows you as the guy who is always having fun.

‘Nuff said.

#2 – Glass Half Full

I spilled my drink. This is is not a new occurrence. I regularly do this. I also regularly knock cutlery off of tables and blow out candles using my nose.

I don’t do this on purpose mind you. As a human being, I tend to use a lot of air, and when I laugh, I dispense that air through my mouth and quick exhalations via my nostrils. And I like to lean over the table to be closer to whomever I am talking to. And that usually puts the candle in direct line of fire from my nasal blasts, so I laugh, and then the candle goes out. It happens. EVERY. TIME.

I was meeting with my writers group (sounds chic doesn’t it? Well it is.) and I was gesticulating grandly, as I tend to do, and I knocked over my nearly full beer. I quickly righted the glass but the beer was gone.

And right then I witnessed one of the greatest gestures of friendship I had ever witnessed. Without even missing a beat, my buddy Phil who was sitting to my left with a nearly full glass of beer poured half of his beer into mine.

He did it without hesitation. It was just, your beer is gone, here is half of mine. I absolutely LOVED that his first instinct was to make sure I had some beer, not there is a mess of beer on the floor now.

It might seem kind of small or trivial, but it was quite significant. And just another reminder for me how awesomely lucky I am to have incredible people around me. And that it really is the little things that stir us.

#1 – Friends

Through everything that has happened this year, far and away what has made anything worthwhile has been sharing my experiences with my friends. Whether it was the good, the bad, or the heart wrenching, I know I am incredibly lucky to be surrounded with the people that I have in my life.

With the awfulness that happened, so many people went out of their way, to say, offer, and do things for me that I probably will never be able to repay. I hope those people get to read this and know just how violet with gratitude my heart burns. Thank you so much.

And now, enough with the past! Here is to the future, to a 2011 filled with all of everything that we want, and none of the nothing that we don’t.

May your new year be filled with big things, or little things, or whatever it is you seek.

Cheers.