45 x 365 Wrap Up

• When you start writing about people in 45 word bites, you start to think about them in 45 word bites. When you're talking to someone, you are likely to ponder what their most intriguing characteristic is and how you can describe them quickly. You also start to parse apart quickly whether or not your overall impression of people is positive or negative. Sometimes this means you stop giving people a chance. I think if I were to rewrite some of my synopses from the first hundred later on, I might have changed my outlook and tone regarding some of those individuals.
  

• It's difficult to write about people you know really well in 45 words. There's too much to say and too many scenarios to play out to make the description pop just the way you want it to. It's also difficult to write about people you don't know really well. Then 45 words is just too many. There are only so many ways to say a person is boring.
  


• Speaking of boring, hey, maybe I could use a thesaurus once in a while. I used the words always and never(68 times!) almost as many times as I used the word the (okay, fine, a lot more than 68). A word frequency of the words I used in my 45 x 365 pieces tells me that I should work on my vocabulary. According to WordCounter, if you take out all the common words in the English language from my posts, here's what I'm left with: never (68), you're (59), one (49), know (49), life (47), time (41), think (39), and other boring one syllable words. The only adjectives and nouns worth mentioning were laugh (34), kind (32), and friend (30). It's somewhat disconcerting to learn that the vast majority of my written words are small and useless.
  
  
• The entire project was fun, but I'm glad it's over. Finding time to write them was more difficult than I initially presume it would be. Even if I only spent 7 or 8 minutes on each one, it still morphed into 7 or 8 minutes each day that I sometimes was angry I had to spend. Hence the occasionally skipping and naughtiness.
  


• In the end, these short descriptions of people said a lot more about me than they did about the people I was writing about. That was an entirely unintended consequence. I thought it would help me write more descriptively, but in the end it served more of the purpose of me grouping people - past, present, future, adders or subtractors to my life, friend or foe, right or wrong. I had to cut through the frill and get to the heart of people in my life and acknowledge some strange grudges I should probably get over.


• Since this is my record, I'll just say that I have many favorites among these. The mostly fall into three categories: people I love (184, 215, 217, 316, 359, and 361), people who taught me about the perils of aging (88 and 134), and people who I have ambivalence about (71, 277, and 327). I found a lot of these to be difficult to write - ambivalence makes for more challenging writing, but now that they are written, I love to read them and savor my opinions from that time in my life.
  

45 x 365 #365

365/365 - EWG

The light of my life, the joy, the pain, the laughter, the tears, and the everything. The insect killer, the vegetable chopper, the bike tire inflater, the dormant volcano of tested patience waiting to erupt. I dream dreams of you, our future, our togetherness forever.

45 x 365 #364

364/365 - FW

Defeated by the world. When you’re not sleeping, you’re thinking about when you can next sleep. I call you and tell you I love you, but it’s not the same as being there daily, watching you battle those demons, and helping you chase them away.

45 x 365 #363

363/365 - TPW

The reflection shows a feminized version of you – same face shape, eyes, and regrettable hairline – along with stubbornness, anger, and impatience. You weren’t always this way and I will try to remember the old you when I see my (your?) face in the mirror.

45 x 365 #362

362/365 - DW

We share parents, initials, a tendency toward anxiety and depression, and precious little else. You can push my buttons like no other, but at the end of the day, it’s you and me together against the ‘rents, for the ‘rents, and because of the ‘rents.

45 x 365 #361

361/365 - TP

Impetuous, sassy, and irreverent. She doesn’t keep a ledger for her checkbook, but can quote Langston Hughes at a moment’s notice. A mama, a daughter, a sister, an English teacher, a wearer of purple nail polish and Cubs tshirts, my bestest friend in the world.

OR

She has been humbled by a psycho ex, but is still open to love and all its joys. It’s impossible to hear a song on the radio without hearing her alternate lyrics. She’s the jelly (not grape) to my peanut butter. My first real love.

OR

I pealed out of the driveway, tires squealing and gravel spraying. She slammed the door loudly behind her. At home that night, we each apologized with small gifts we had unknowingly procured for the other. Best friends fight, sure, but always kiss and make up.

45 x 365 #360

360/365 - JK

She is a ray of sunshine in my life everyday. She has lived in many places and has stories from all of them. She loves her little girl to pieces, but finds the day to day living and breathing and paying the bills sometimes overwhelming.

45 x 365 #359

359/365 - TJC

She told me her major was creative writing and I said, in my usual tactful way, “why don’t you get a real major?” But she is a writer, a fabulous writer. Her poems make my heart hurt and her stories make me scared and lonely.

OR

I would watch her play Final Fantasy Tactics until my eyes would fall heavy and drool would end up on her pillow. We would play pool (badly) and order Papa John’s garlic bread and drink Mountain Dew while listening to Garth Brooks and Billy Joel.

OR

She’s a slacker. She’d take an F in a class rather than ask an instructor to sign that paper. She earned a master’s degree but works a crappy job at a crappy clothing store. She’s also loyal, funny, smart, and one of my best friends.

OR

Hers is a dysfunctional family; she watches her siblings fall in and out of love. She doesn’t want to be like them, in oh so many ways, so she steals her heart, stays in her shell, and hides away so no man can hurt her.

45 x 365 #358

358/365 - MG

They went to college together, a college that has long been closed, back in the 1960s. But twice a month, without fail, she kicks her husband out of the house, makes tea, and sits down to enjoy a gossip session with her best oldest friends.

45 x 365 #357

357/365 - MG

He came back from the war with a wandering eye. When asked what happened, he shrugged, unable to relive whatever happened. Now he’s a funny old man, sometimes crotchety, always getting frustrated by the ever downtrodden Cubs and always kicking ass in family euchre tournaments.

45 x 365 #356

356/365 - MG

When he errs, death is a not unlikely scenario. He takes this seriously, so seriously that he cannot see the import of any job that does not involve manipulating human organs. I end up questioning my worth around him, but I also question his worth.

45 x 365 #355

355/365 - SKG

We went to a street fair together, laughing at the guy making balloon animals and getting matching temporary tattoos on our arms. But your personality, fun and quirky as it used to be, has been subsumed by parenthood. Sadly, now you are dull and spiritless.

45 x 365 #354

354/365 - EG

She is the source of my greatest shame. Even her beloved grandparents describe her has stubborn and willful. She makes my husband think having children is a wrong move for everyone, including us, and secretly, deep inside, she makes me think the exact same thing.

45 x 365 #353

353/365 - MH

In a room crowded with people, I will find myself gravitating toward him, unconsciously making him my human security blanket. He has a calm, serious demeanor, but then he’ll mutter under his breath a spot on deprecating comment and make me laugh until I cry.

45 x 365 #352

352 - KH

Serious in appropriate places – church and work. Otherwise you’re silly and lighthearted. You sat in the car last weekend, seat pushed back as far as it goes (“ridin’ dirty”), window down, feet up on the dash, screaming “I’m a Bee,” and making us all laugh.

45 x 365 #351

351/365 - MK

Rumor has it you were a spitfire when you were younger, sassy and snappy, but when you got married, you turned into a doormat, taking on your husband’s ultra-conservative politics and religious beliefs. You let his cheating go with no consequences. Where is that spitfire?

45 x 365 #350

350/365 - MG

You must be useful at all times and are incapable of just sitting still for more than thirty seconds unless you’re watching basketball or college football. The kind of guy who hasn’t read a novel in years, but reads the newspaper every morning at breakfast.

45 x 365 #349

349/365 - MA

When I met you, you wrapped your arms around me in a hug that made me feel so important, so wanted, that I nearly broke down in tears. Your family is your everything and that you welcomed me into that fold has not gone unappreciated.

45 x 365 #348

348/365 - NWK

You pronounced us man and wife, even as we giggled at the power vested in you by the state of Minnesota. You are one of the few I can count on to answer the phone in crisis and the best marriage counselor I’ll ever know.

45 x 365 #347

347/365 - KC

He was a terror at five, a bully at fifteen, and at eighteen is an abusive young man who has been jailed for domestic violence twice already. I admit that I cringe when he walks in the room, readying for a fight I can’t win.