Another year is over: twenty-ten, which looks more like a sports score than a year.

What did I do this year? In no particular order, moved with Matt into an apartment on the Barnard campus; painted a room for the first time — my home office; paid off my student loan; improved my finances; bought a Mac, an iPhone 4, and a Kindle; went to Disney World; sang in several concerts with my chorus, including one in New Haven; went on business trips to Houston and to Banff, Alberta; got a new boss; visited Matt’s family outside Chattanooga for Thanksgiving; learned more about being an uncle; reconnected with my 95-year-old great aunt; saw a heck of a lot of theater and a few movies; got more into Twitter; said goodbye to Lost; started watching Modern Family; decided to emotionally separate myself from politics.

This has been one of the most financially stable years of my life, and I wish I could say it’s because of my own actions, but it’s not; it’s because I have a partner whose job provides us an apartment as part of his compensation. I have a pleasant job that doesn’t pay nearly as much as I would if I were a practicing attorney, but that’s okay. As wonderful as these things are — and I know I am very lucky to have them — my life is not perfect; there are some big ongoing issues that I don’t write about here. I don’t have any disease or illness or anything like that; it’s just “life” stuff. Still, I’m in a seven-year relationship with someone who loves me and whom I love, and that’s saying a lot.

It’s hard to believe we greeted the new millennium 11 years ago. It’s hard for me to believe I’m 37 years old. I don’t like it. But there’s nothing I can do about it; one of the continuing themes for me these last few months has been to try to accentuate the positive, to appreciate the little good moments each day, to realize that my life is not going to be grand, that I will not be famous, that I probably won’t ever write a book, and that none of this really matters, because I’m not a more important human being than anyone else: I’m just one of the billions of people on this planet who will be forgotten a few decades after I’m gone.

All you can really do is live.

Here’s to more living in 2011.