The Art of Faking It

Normally speaking, I allow the days approaching New Years to become a spiritual journey into the depths of my brain. I leisurely take hours of afternoons selfishly mapping out the leftover of my life, with colored sharpies and stick-it notes. I dwell on the amazing moments tucked away in 2008 journaling with typos and adjectives. I dream big and eat bigger, and then justify it all by a long run (sans guilt from the doctors) listening to rap spiced with the occasional melancholy song, which remind me of old memories I refuse to let go of, and then as the clock breathes life into a new year, I swallow every last drop of nostalgia with a generous glass of wine. Because moving forward is rough, especially when everything behind was so perfect…


I’ve never been one to embrace change. But I’m damn good at faking it.

How many conversations have you had this past Christmas season at cocktail gatherings with friend, foe and strangers alike… The type where you’re teetering on uncomfortable heels, balancing your eggnog with awkwardness… silently pretending to be fascinated by someone’s verbiage… the nothingness that pales in comparison to your own nothingness… and yes, this entry is probably being interpreted as terrible of me to type, but seriously consider who you’ve offered your listening time to. Don’t you feel a wee bit better of your altruism for helping someone feel like they’re interesting enough that you’d voluntarily listen to them? Isn’t that all we want in life? To feel worth being heard.

Because regardless of how bored, or boring that someone might be, or the conversation they were droning on about… their nephew, boss, cat, terrible book they got through simply to get their mother-in-law to pipe down, there is certain energy, a light, a passion shared when someone is speaking about a subject in which they care- and then that boring subject suddenly starts to sparkle - and now that is subject is interesting - why? Why, because somebody cares!

Even watching their arms orchestrate through the air, hearing the octave change in their voice, like a melody, a contagious cadence- it’s infectious. Physics, the atoms exhaled and embraced are unstoppable little organisms in which we thrive off of… And what they're saying might have no value to us, but inside of their words… there is a person carrying this vibrant glow, and what they’re saying resonates even with us – and then we’re (I’m) not faking it anymore. I’m simply happy that someone has found something in which to believe in, enough so, that they're smiling, enough that they’re talking to me about it.