Looking Back on 2011

Happy New Year!  Here are my fondest memories of 2011:

• Maroma Margaritas on the beach in Tulum, Mexico
• Lazy Sundays spent in Notting Hill street cafes, squeezing in tighter around the table as friends wander by and pull up a chair
• The Museum of Innocence, by Orhan Pamuk.  Karoo, by Steve Tesich.  The weekly Modern Love column in the New York Times.
• Morning runs in Hyde Park followed by frothy cappuccinos and fruit from the market stalls on the way home
• Dancing all over London, racing dawn in 4 inch heels
• Limen at the Royal Opera House, then dinner at The Ivy, avec maman
• London Freize week parties
• Gypsy Kings in the piazzetta of Portofino
• Late night transatlantic Skype conversations with my siblings
• Summer days in Pilion, trying to dock my little boat in its impossibly awkward mooring in a little port in a little fishing village in a little peninsula that is my paradise.

I am certain that I have left out many many glorious moments, but a pattern has begun to emerge that illustrates my motivation to create this blog:  All these experiences and objects are peripheral to my every day life, they do not form its core.   The core is what I studied for, sacrificed summers to internships over, and subjected myself to rigorous examinations and interviews to achieve.  Its the subject of the majority of conversations I have with my father.  It is what 50% of the clothes in my wardrobe are appropriate for, and the only reason that I own sensible shoes.  It is what I wake up early for, and what consumes the most significant number of hours of my day.

And yet, when I look back on 2011, the core becomes irrelevant.  My real life, the actual me, is in the halo that surrounds the core, made up of hundreds of particles of my suspended weightless joy, revolving around the central mass, like the rings of the planet Saturn.

My true passion lies not in my day to day routine of work, but in my free time, in the life that my work facilitates.  What bothers me is that the meaningless mass of my life is so well documented.  I have 100s of emails, files, receipts and folders detailing each interaction and event of my work.  Who cares?  What I really want to remember is the halo.  Hence this blog:  My exploits, thoughts, tastes, trips, experiences, and adventures that are the real me.  Voila!