Keith talks about 2009

Here's your special guest writer, Keith Hernandez, potentially doing something illegal.

"Two thousand and nine was easily the most life-like year I've ever experienced. It really showed me the ups and the downs. More than I was expecting anyway.

I traveled more than I've ever traveled in my life. I always fly from California to Texas every year for Christmas, but aside from that I don't really travel much. Last January I finally got to see San Francisco and it was exactly as I hoped. Dive bars, fancy breakfasts, weed from Dreadlocks Guy in the park, shrooms from Other Dreadlocks Guy in a dive bar, and a kind of vibe that I could get used to.

It was the first vacation I had been on in years. And it was also a breathe of fresh air after being "downsized" from my last job in '08. Luckily my part time job was sort of keeping me afloat, but not really.

Then later in May I got to see New York City with my dad and brother. Even though it was only one weekend, it was more than memorable, it was amazing and I'll never forget it. It was weird being in a job crunch while simultaneously taking more vacations than ever before. It put my brain into a weird self-inflicted guilt trip.

Throughout the rest of the year the emotional roller coaster only picked up speed as the awesomeness was constantly juxtaposed to true calamity. In the next six months I would see Las Vegas for the first time (and also for the second), I would party, I would be merry, I would fly home three times, I would have my final words with a man that was like a father to me, and I would coax a crowd of over 200 people into uproarious applause by singing "She's Your Queen" from Coming to America. I would forget more awesome stories than any year to date.

In those six months I would reassess how strong I really am, then be wrong and reassess how strong I really am. I would grow closer to my family than ever before while celebrating one decade of living more than a thousand miles away from them. I would see my 76 year old grandmother see the West Coast for the first time in her life. I would see more in those six months than I had seen in the collective 24 and half years prior to it.

But I feel stronger and ready. Whatever that bull shit means. I'm ready to take this new job promotion seriously and to take my career to the next level. I still feel like a kid sometimes at work; like they see me as a kid. I think I'm ready to grow up.

I think I might have grown up in 2009. But not too much. Poop. Poop poopy fart. There. Now in 2010 I can set a goal to grow up enough to stop using poop as a fall back joke."

Keith Hernandez is one of them twenty-somethings graphic designers living in Costa Mesa, CA. It's odd how many of them twenty-somethings graphic designers living in Costa Mesa, CA I know... Anyhow, you can find Keith's somewhat nonsensical ramblings over at his Twitter page.