10 things I'm excited for

As I was taking notes on one of the papers I was reading for my summer work, I looked closely at the letters I was writing, and how they are merely symbols and characters of our language. It reminded me of Lost and Jack's tattoo, how it had Chinese characters. I thought of the quote at the end of that episode, and got a brilliant idea to have a compilation of all of my favorite Lost quotes. Which I could compile as I rewatch the entire series. Here are nine other things I'm excited for.

2. Doing the same for House. The summer after I graduated high school, I wanted to watch all six seasons of House before the seventh one started. I got midway through the fifth season. Point is, the whole time, I was writing down my favorite episodes, and why. A great patient, an interesting plot development, or some amazing quote. Now that the series is over, it only makes sense to do this again.

3. ORIENTATION! With our first day of training tomorrow, you would think that this would be at the top of the list, but I had to lead into the theme of the post. I'M SO EXCITED! I woke up today, thought about it, and was in an immediately ecstatic mood. I'm living in the same room that I had last year, and I dunno, I'm just incredibly excited to go through all of this again.

4. 2012-2013. Next year will be busy, exciting, interesting, and many more things. I'm just ready to take in another year at Stonehill (despite typing this FROM Stonehill...) and just kill it in the time I have here. Some of my friends are going abroad next year, which is something I've never really had a desire for. Maybe I'll live vicariously through their abroad experiences next year, so I get the best of both worlds. In reality, I'm perfectly content with my Stonehill world.

5. June 28th through July 3rd. On four out of those five days, the Red Sox play at 10:05pm ET. Thank you, West Coast trips! I love falling asleep listening to a Red Sox radio broadcast. We might actually win some of those games too, because we're playing Seattle and Oakland.

6. July 4th! Nothing like July 4th in the Cape. Vicki will be coming down, and I'm going to try and get some of my friends from home down, too, like last year. It will be mad fun and I'm really excited and it will be nice to just relax for a few days. Not that I don't relax here, but I mean really relax. Do literally nothing with my life.

7. Orientation blogging! I definitely thought about putting this as the fourth item, but passed it up for a while. With the short amount of time I have between 16-hour days, my blog posts during/about Orientation will be heavy posts with lots of depth. Either that, or an 83% increase in exclamation points.

8. Numbers! I'm in the midst of an enormous fantasy baseball statistical excavation (Editor's Note: That might be the 35th best word I could have used there. The first 34 have escaped me right now.) where I take every team's statistics and plug them into various formulas, coming out with value rankings on which team has the best hitting, pitching, overall team (independent of record), and then who's been having to face tougher opponents. I could go into so much detail, but I will refrain. The second part of my excitement for numbers is that I'm starting to fully understand that I'll be messing around with numbers and labelings for my SURE project this summer. Again, I could go into more detail, but I won't. Basically, I get to see which combination of numbers yields something cool. Puzzles. Math puzzles.

9. Reading. No, seriously, reading. I go from numbers to reading? The only way that would ever make sense is if said reading were about sports. Which is exactly what reading I'm excited for. I still have a ways to go in Now I Can Die in Peace, Bill Simmons's masterpiece about the 2004 Red Sox team. I also have a couple of ESPN The Magazines from forever ago to read. I love going through them and reading about stuff, even if it's not up to date. I pull out some of the better-looking pictures and tape them on my wall, too. It's like a shrine of awesome pictures/articles. All four of them.

10. Life. Yeah, I know, leave the absolute corniest thing in the world for last, but you know what? Things are corny for a reason. And corny things go last for a reason. That reason is because IT'S TRUE. A few days ago, a couple of my friends and I were talking about the universe, and planets, and stars, and other astronomical things, while shooting some hoops with the lights out at a park at midnight. It was awesome, and it made me realize how small we are, but just how much we can do with our lives. Everyone has something going for them somewhere. Maybe it's one thing right now, or maybe it'll be a couple of things coming up. But just keep on plugging away at it. Whatever it is, if it's worth it, will make you want it. Go after it.

Before the 2010 MLB season, Jayson Stark wrote a piece for ESPN about what makes a winner win. I think that what he says about Derek Jeter is one of the best and most honorable things anyone can say about somebody else:

"But the quality that really separates Derek Jeter from the masses is the unstoppable force that drives him from April to September. We know it as energy. But it's more. Or focus. But it's more. Relentless concentration. But it's more. What Jeter really has is an ignition with no "off" switch. It's there in his first at-bat on Opening Day. It's there in the ninth inning of Game 162. And it's always pumping -- every day, every inning, every pitch in between."

I love that imagery. Ignition with no "off" switch. Never stopping. Don't stop with whatever you do. Keep at it and good things will happen.