finish reading atlas shrugged - check.

"i swear by my life and my love of it that i will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."

atlas shrugged took me a long time to read. like a year. im not really sure why. sure, it was 1,070 pages, but that's really only like two regular-sized books, and those don't take me six months to read. whatever the reason, i'm finished now.

when i pick up a old book i've read, i'm usually hit with a flashback of my life at the time i read it. a tale of two cities reminds me of late nights freshman year, stressing to finish assigned chapters for my 8am literature class and weighing the likelihood of a pop quiz. i read memoirs of a geisha over a christmas vacation from school, holed up in my parents' basement, in which i slept for the whole month instead of my own bedroom because i was used to having a double bed. my sister's keeper went with me to the outer banks two years ago; sand in the binding and the smell of sunscreen on the pages will continue to remind me of this.

it's a little different with atlas shrugged. so many things happened or changed over the past year that i can't put a feeling on or associate a specific event with it. i made some big decisions. i made some little decisions. i dealt with the unpleasant aftermath of ending a relationship. one of my best friends moved overseas. another best friend got engaged. i moved to a new apartment. we had a winter with over 50 inches of snow. i met someone new. things ended with mr. new. i started playing kickball. i bought season football tickets.

so it's been a hell of a year. thanks dagny and rearden, for coming along for the ride.