N e w // Y e a r

2 0 1 6

 Tonight my life felt like the end of The Holiday, which is all I've ever really dreamed for my life to be. My entire life, well, my entire adolescence really, I've dreamed for my life to feel, be, and look like a movie. And it was only recently that I realized that life isn't like that. It's messy. It's hard. People get hurt, things don't turn out the way you expect them to, accidents happen and stuff just sucks. But you choose to forgive, you choose to get back up, you choose to keep going, and one day, you realize that you left all of the bad stuff in the past.

 2015 was a year of moving on. Moving forward, taking no prisoners, and working my butt off until I got what I wanted. No one gave it to me...I worked for it. And so did the people I surrounded myself with. I'm lucky that in 2015, I found people who dream as big as I do, and are willing to work just as hard to get it. We are all on the same path-- this path to greatness, this path to dreams coming true and our lives turning out like the movies we see in our heads. And I think finding these people who dream just as big and work just as hard has helped me on my path. Because now I don't feel so alone anymore. I used to think that I was "on my own path." And I thought that meant my life was going to be a lonely one, a solitary journey if you will. But this year I learned that not only does that not have to be the case, if things keep going the way they have been...it most certainly won't be.

 Last night I stumbled upon this word: synchronicity. It is, according to the ever-trustworthy internet: the simultaneous occurrence of events that appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection.  

 It is essentially saying that we assign meaning where there is none. But sometimes, there is meaning. I think the word synchronicity is cynical. (Say that five times fast.) Maybe I'm just nostalgic and overtired, but I think it's beautiful, the vulnerability of allowing yourself to feel. Over the course of 2015 I kept a jar of memories. Anytime something significant, fun, or particularly noteworthy happened, I wrote it down on a little slip of paper, remembering to include the date. This morning, on the first day of the New Year, I read through them all for the first time since I wrote each of them, some from January 1st, some from December 25th. There was no order, so I frequently pulled slips from random months. One from January, one from August. One from April, one from September. May, August. October, February. Seeing an entire year of my life compiled into such a small space and juxtaposed with no chronology made me realize how much really happened in the last 12 months. So many significant events, non-events, moments, friendships, relationships, mishaps, and joy. It was overwhelming to read a slip of paper from January in which I talk about finishing my first short film, and then in the next read about how I had just pitched Overdue to the library board and it had been unanimously approved. The hopeful ones made me the most emotional. It was like reading a beloved book when you already know the ending. It's not boring, but happy. You know what's going to happen, but you keep reading anyway, because it's so sweetly satisfying. It's weird to say that I felt that about my own life today. Weird, but cool. So maybe this is synchronicity in action, and I'm a silly, sappy, hopeless romantic who is bound to be disappointed by the random and uncaring nature of the universe. 

If that's the case, I may be hopeless, but I'm still hopeful. 

Happy 2016. 

 -Fran