Are you excited/scared? - Reflections on 2008-2009

At a wedding, Gainesville.

Acting like an idiot, Las Vegas.

Com meu irmão, Rio de Janeiro.

DeSoto Parade Weekend at Rani's, Bradenton.

Biking the Hawthorne Trail, Gainesville.

"The map says it should be right here." HAR HAR HAR.
Tian Tan Buddha, Hong Kong.

Subway, Seoul City.
(photo credit: Alex Kwon)

Carving mildly racist pumpkins, Gainesville.

The number one question that I am asked on a daily basis is "Are you excited (and/or) scared?" The answer is “not really.” I’ve spent the last couple of weeks with old friends (thanks Keshia, Leigh, Katie), drinking a couple of beers, eating pizza, burgers, sushi, more sushi, more pizza, more beer, and then running. Yes, I have gained weight, but I’ll probably lose it quickly.

While working everyday helped me to feel accomplished, just having a hiatus from life as I knew it has given me the opportunity to reflect a bit on my life. I re-read this pathetic blog and relived a lot of incredible moments from Asia (thanks Becky, Alex, Matt, Jessica, Erin & Mr. G). I usually think of blogging and photography as incredibly narcissistic (I know I know, the blog is presumptuously named “Your Favorite Joe…”), but reflecting on my prior entries really brought me back to where I was over a year ago, and reminded me how much can happen in a single year.

That is to say, in an effort to give these same feelings of nostalgia to the “Joe-of-the-future,” and to let my friends know that I genuinely appreciate them, I am going to brazenly and publicly display some very personal thoughts and pictures, thus providing a snapshot of my life, before I go through another year of inevitable change.

This past year has been the most emotionally challenging year of my life. It feels silly to say that, considering the challenges that many of my friends have been through. But while my problems pale in comparison to those of some of my friends, that doesn’t mean I don’t have problems, and it doesn’t mean that I don’t have anything to learn from them.

I made a huge mistake in trusting people that I should not have trusted. And when the problems began showing up in my life, I blamed everyone but the responsible party. I almost lost my best friend, I got into fights with my parents and my brother, and ultimately, it was my fault. It is my responsibility who I allow into my life, and who I let affect me, and I should have been a man and bared that responsibility instead of shifting it to other people.

That said, I have since corrected my life, and while I still have problems understanding what happened, I am learning to say “it doesn’t matter, because I am happier and hopefully smarter now.” The lesson learned is that I am an impressionable person, and while good people have a huge positive impact on me, bad people have an equally negative impact on me. I should be more critical of the people that I allow close to me.

That aside, I have had an incredible life and I can’t possibly see how it could get any better. I am genuinely thankful to the universe for bestowing an unusual amount of high quality people in my life, which is includes family, friends and coworkers (thanks Renee, Patrice). As I said this was the most emotionally challenging year of my life, but at the same time, I’ve never dealt with it better, which is certainly greatly in part to the people that I still have in my life today. Unfortunately for you guys, you are real gems in my life, and there is no way you will escape now.

So if you're wondering if I'm excited/scared, well at this point I'm downright invincible. I hope you enjoyed the embarrassing picture potpourri.

Much love,

Joseph