The Best Year of My Life - An Epic Adventure in 12 Parts: January

For the final 12 days of the year, I thought I'd look back at my 2012 and determine why it was the best year of my life. Every month brought new adventures, achievements, bits of awesome that worked to make my world a happier, more fulfilling, more exciting place. Come along with me, won't you?

January

The previous year had been a rough one, no way around it. I left my long-term temp job in the hopes of something more lucrative, a move that did not pay off. I spent much of the early winter unemployed from a full-time job, but not able to collect unemployment. I was working box office and being a bartender at the theater, and they gave me some odds and ends to do, but otherwise, I was hurting. I eventually took a temp job at a publishing company in one of the less glamorous sections. I did not expect it to go that far.

On New Year’s Eve, I volunteered as a greeter for ImprovBoston’s New Year’s party. It would turn out to be a good omen. Despite the crappiness of the previous few months, I was optimistic. I made a list of eight New Year’s resolutions:

1. GO TO DISNEYLAND
2. GET LUCKY JEANS
3. OWN BOWLING SHIRTS
4. GET A SHAVING KIT
5. NANO EVERY DAY
6. SEE COMEDY ELSEWHERE
7. TRAVEL SOMEPLACE THAT ISN'T DISNEY
8. PAY OFF YOUR CREDIT CARD

Some of those would come true. Some wouldn’t. It mattered but it didn’t, because in almost all ways I managed to surpass this list in completely unexpected ways. You’ll see.

Shawn showed up just before midnight and we kissed. Sometimes we’re not together on New Year’s Eve, which isn’t necessarily the tragedy I could make of it (I adore tradition, and also emotional moments that movie and books tell me are important), but I was glad for it this night. Surrounded by friends, inside the theater I loved, kissing my sweetie: it was a great way to start the year.

My buddy Marty came down from New Jersey and, on a whim, decided to go to Rocky Horror in Harvard Square. I hadn’t been in a while and I was a little rusty, but the old love of it washed over me again. I’m at the age, I think, where I know that chasing the dragons of your youth can sometimes result in getting burned, but this was different. Familiar. Comfortable. As erotically thrilling as ever. Sometimes, you can go home … even if it’s to a transvestite in fishnets.

Midway through the month, I ran across one of my “Here’s how I met Stephen King” stories, with all the requisite embarrassment and shame and fanboy drooling. And I thought, I could tell this to people and they’d find it funny. Wait, don’t I work at a comedy theater? As it turns out, I did. As it further turns out, Christine Cuddy, one of my acquaintances at the theater, ran a storytelling show on Wednesdays called A Night of Oral Tradition. I asked her if I could get up and tell my tale and she readily agreed. On January 19th, she announced me as “the best friend a theater could have,” and I told my Stephen King story to the gathered assemblage. And my theater boss.

Springsteen announced a new album. John Irving announced a new book. I wrote a column for FEARnet.com about Stephen King and his unpublished recent stories. My poem, “DMM,” completed my poetry collection, Surf’s Up, which I thought I might self-publish, like Foggy at Night in the City had been the year before.

Late in the month, the producers at Sketchhaus – the premiere sketch comedy night at ImprovBoston – asked me if I would be interested in co-producing the night. I was honored to even be asked. I’ve had no formal comedy training, I’d never written a script, and except for my hosting Naked Comedy Night and doing my one storytelling thingy, I’d never been on stage. But it seemed interesting and fun, so I said okay. Simple as that.

Things were looking up.

Books Read: Watership Down, by Richard Adams; Cujo, by Stephen King; The Shining, by Stephen King