2012: The Year of Seconds

It has been quite some time since I've had enough structure in my life to keep up with television shows by watching new episodes on their regular weekly showing time, but there once was a time when I was able to and here's how I remember it.  The first season or two are really exciting because the show is new and you never know how the writers are going to create new situations and how they are going to make the characters change over time.  Everything is fresh and new and surprising, in other words, those intro seasons are the reason people love television.  Around the time of the third season two things can happen, the show creates convoluted situations to keep the show alive and keep people guessing (mostly done by shows on Showtime) or they can settle into their routine and episodes become moderately predictable.  Then at some point during a season you sit down to watch a new episode and you realize that the episode seems oddly familiar, it usually should take no longer than 3 minutes to realize that they are showing a damn rerun during primetime.  Those primetime reruns were probably the most annoying thing when I watched TV rather than Netflix, I wanted a new experience, not to watch an old episode again that I probably remember too well.  Before my 1 faithful reader starts thinking I'm going to explode into a rant about primetime television, I'll bring this point together.  You see, I've reached the point in my life where I am starting to get reruns, and it is a little bit worse than on television.  It is weird because with the rumored apocalypse coming I'm pretty sure that the ratings on my life are waning and the writers are taking a few weeks off to rewrite all the scripts to put a succinct end to the story.  Either that or the writers are completely mailing it in.  Anyways, lets look at some of my reruns in this year of 2012.

Sounds like a plan!

The year started off pretty new, as you can read in some of my past posts I was unemployed and tried to start a sports blog with some friends, it was all new experiences for me even though most of them were terrible experiences.  But the time for new experiences was over when graduate school decisions came to me (yeah, I'm continuing my education, its gonna be sweet) and I had to make my decision on where I was going to spend an arbitrary amount of years depending on my program. If you read my past post about how I chose which college to attend for my undergraduate studies you know that I made a decision and later got a better deal from another school so I switched schools before attending a single class.  Well for some reason (my subconscious being an asshole) those two schools were the only ones that I applied to for graduate school.  Sure as hell when I got into both of them I was only given a financial aid package for one of them, and after a visit I decided that the program and the package was right for me so I sent my confirmation there a few weeks before my decision was needed.  Proud of myself and happy to no have had to make a difficult situation I relaxed and prepared for my new life at a new school.  But since this article is about reruns I'm sure you can guess what happens next!  My Alma Mater sent me a more attractive financial package and I was forced to rethink my decision again.  This time I actually held steady with my initial decision (I couldn't spend any more time out there, just not a nice place to live) and I'm gonna end up questioning that one just as much as with 4 years ago. It seemed at the time like an isolated incident of my life repeating itself, but I was eventually going to learn that was going to become a trend.

I know the feeling yellow ghost...

After that I returned to my apartment at school to have some final fun with my friends before the graduation ceremony, which was the obvious setting of my next rerun.  Over the course of four years I forgot how incredibly boring graduation ceremonies are, you are wearing a silly looking dress with a cardboard square on your head, it's summer and you are probably outside and the only thing you have to listen to is some guy reading names off of a list.  Luckily I knew the people I was sitting with so instead of seeming like I was sitting there for the 4 hours the ceremony lasted it was more like 3 hours and 52 minutes.  Then came the recurring situation of saying goodbye to your friends that you spent the last few years bonding with just in time to likely see them a limited number of times in the future (obviously a lot more true for college than high school but it did happen with some people in high school), which is always full of making fake plans that will never come to fruition because you don't want to get emotional in what could be your last meeting.  I know that this was a planned rerun, but it happened and was kind of a rough day.

Slightly relevant but funny nonetheless.

 The next case was when the year of reruns completely dawned on me, because the next two took place on the same day.  I spent the morning helping one of my best friends move into a new house closer to where they work, which is over an hour away and at that distance that makes visiting slightly burdensome.  This was the second one of my best friends that I had helped move to a spot that fits the slightly burdensome description (granted the first one was December 2011 but this still counts) and since they are both in different  directions I wonder how often I will ever see both of them at the same time.  I have spent most of the last seven years with those two guys, and moving them away is changing my life just as much it is theirs, except they have to become grown-ups now and I'm retaining my youth by staying in school.  Knowing this was a great time to celebrate this change in life, we spent that night having some good old fashioned fun!  Whilst having said "fun" I received a text message that I was warned about that morning.  It was a picture of a ring on what is to be my sister-in-law's finger and thus was the second time one of my brothers had gotten engaged.  The oldest of my brothers was married last summer and was 25 at the time, and the brother who had just gotten engaged and is currently 23 years old.  The "fun" I was describing earlier reflects the fact that I am 21 years old as of this writing and nowhere near a place where I will follow in the footsteps of my brothers in that category.  I've known for a while that I lead a much different life than my brothers so it's not like this happening put me in a state of "what am I doing with my life," I am proud of them all and I can't wait to give another best man speech next summer, maybe I'll have someone there this time to facepalm and ask themselves what they see in me.  

Hey bride, pull my finger!

So there's a few reruns from my life, now that I see this trend coming along this year I can't help but wonder what situations I am going to find myself in again with the half of the year that remains.  A lot of ones that come to mind aren't the most pleasant, but I think I'll enjoy them as they come and go.  I'll be sure to keep my reader up to date on all goings on in my life whether they are new episodes or reruns, until then enjoy Lawrence at his finest.