Well, here it is—my attempt at yet another Christmas letter.  I was surprised by the reaction I got from some people when I wrote a general letter last year.  One person even got angry at me because I hadn’t written them in a while and then all they got from me was this "Hey everybody" letter.  (If that was you, you know who you are…, I apologize, but I did write you later, right?)  But nevertheless, I’ve decided to keep my little tradition a tradition by writing a "year in review" letter for the second year in a row.  If I’ve only met you in the past year and are receiving this letter for the first time, you can skip the whole paragraph that you just read (Guess I should have told you that before you read it—sorry!) and go on to paragraph #2 where I shut up with all this babbling and just start with the letter.  And on that note, here goes…
    I’ve really been trying to think about how to start this letter because I could go chronologically, starting with my first time getting drunk in January of last year to spending five days skiing in the mountains the week after Christmas; or I could highlight the big events of the last year and talk about how they have impacted me…  I guess I will just start in January of last year and see where my writing takes me.  (Of course, if I want to change it, I can, and none of you will ever know.  There won’t be any scribbles on the paper (no reference to my handwriting intended  :<)   I’ll just go back through the letter and cut and paste it until it looks right to me.  Isn’t technology wonderful?  (Speaking of which, I just saw Enemy of the State with Gene Hackman and Will Smith—Go see it, it’s a great flick to make you wonder what’s really going on in real life (X-files---don’t think so.  Sorry X-files fans, there’s nothing wrong with the show, I just am not a huge fan.)  Other must sees from this past year include Saving Private Ryan, A Bug’s Life, AntZ, and some others that I’m sure I’ve forgotten.  Movies to miss include Bullworth, and Very Bad Things.  These were very bad movies (pun, of course, intended) that weren’t worth the reduced student rate I paid to get in.)
    So yes, all rumors can be quelled, Jonathan Kraft did get drunk at a Peer Counselor party last January.  For those of you who don’t watch the six o’clock news, I was at a party for our high school’s peer counselors at someone’s house and I got drunk.  Okay, it’s over now.
    The reason I write about it like this is that it became this big deal for a lot of people who couldn’t believe that I had gone to a party and gotten drunk, and it spread to a lot of people, some of whom I didn’t even know, but they sure loved to give me crap about it.  Some other things did happen while I was drunk, but nothing that was very bad.  I wouldn’t even say something about it in this letter except that I guess it changed my perspective on my whole "peer counseling ‘experience.’ "  (Which, as I’ve found with a lot of the things I did from January to post-graduation, has taken me the better part of the first semester to remember and sort through because I was so busy and trying to cram everything into too small of a time period.  But I’m sure no one else can relate to that, yah right!.)  What I really found out about peer counseling is that I spent so much time trying to ‘fix’ myself that I didn’t have the time or energy to help other people like I wanted to, and I also couldn’t be what I wanted to be for myself or others.  It’s like that old cowboy saying, "If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it."  I now know that the reason is that if you try and fix it, you might just break it.  Looking back, I spent a lot of time when I was with that peer counseling group feeling broken, but of course, hindsight is 20/20.  I can’t say that I really regret any of that time though because I learned so much.  I learned a lot about relating to other people and who I should be if I want to have the most meaningful relationships with them.  Mostly, I learned what I don’t want to be, by being who I don’t want to be (It’s a difficult way to learn, someone once called it the school of hard knocks I believe).  Going away to college has given me an opportunity to break away and realize all this, to "deprogram" myself by realizing who and what I don’t want to be.  Now I’m thinking about who I want to be, which is not something you really work on, it’s just something you either are or aren’t.  You can only change who you are for other people by changing what you do and/or how you act.
    What I want to be is an entirely different question.  As of yet, I have not decided on a major, though at present I plan to declare a major in communications with minors in Music and German.  What I will do with these degrees, I’m not entirely sure, but nowadays, having only one career your whole life is pretty impractical and unlikely, so I figure with a broad base of degrees and a major that can apply in many career fields, I can’t go wrong.  The world is always looking for ways to communicate better, especially with the advancements in technology, so I hope and believe that I can be a part of that.  I don’t imagine it will be my career my whole life, but it will give me some place to start from.
    In March of this last year (hey, wait, what happened to February (BTW—what’s up with the spelling of that month?  Can someone, anyone, help me out here?) I was in a musical that almost no one has ever heard of.  It is called Chess, and is a hypothetical story based on the chess game that was played between a Russian and an American during the cold war.  I played the part of; the father of the woman who is the advisor to the American who falls in love with the Russian who is actually having an affair with her because he’s married to a woman who is still in Russia (Got all that?).  I am the one who opened the show with a solo song.  After which, I exit the stage and am promptly blown up.  I have one small revival part in the second act which is a flashback to when the aforementioned (Isn’t that a great word?  My spell checker on my computer even knows it.) woman was a little girl.  It makes a lot of people cry, which of course is what you’re striving for when you are on stage.  (Not to make people cry, but to make them feel so much a part of the story that they experience very strong emotions.)  The thing that was awesome about this show was that we were selected as one of only five or six high schools in the nation to perform our musical on stage at the Lied center in front of 2700 people for the International Thespian Convention.  Needless to say, being the one who opened the show, basically on stage all alone for most of the first scene, was just a little nerve-wracking.  It was so much fun though performing on stage as well as being in Lincoln (well, maybe not Lincoln itself, though it seems to be a fun city, especially for a city in Nebraska!--Sorry Em).  I met a few really cool people and had fun hanging out with the rest, even if some of them were just a little strange.
    April brought about one of the most interesting and awesome experiences of my life to this point.  I had earlier been selected as one of ten students from my high school to travel to France with a musical (Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris), and also got to be in the show which they brought here last April called Grease.  (I’m sure none of you have ever heard of this one either!)  All the dialogue was done in French and all the songs in English, so of course the American students were in the songs and not in the scenes.  Two of the French guys actually stayed at my house (Benjamin and Laurent) and it was really awesome to have the time to sit down and talk to someone from halfway across the world and find out that we do have differences, but that we are much more alike than we might believe or even admit.  Seeing them off at the airport was difficult, but it was made easier by the fact that we knew that we would be in Paris to visit them in June.
    Spring has always meant for me that it was time to pull out the Lacrosse equipment and get ready for another season, but this year I didn’t play.  I didn’t play lacrosse because of time constraints and because I had surgery (more in a minute) but haven’t really found that I miss LAX all that much.  I have really found this semester that I miss football though.  I feel like I should be out there playing instead of sitting in the stands.  I don’t know exactly how to remedy this situation.  I have thought about going out as a walk-on to the first day of practice next year, but I don’t know.  I think I might just be trying to revive something that is already over and done with.  We’ll see what happens with that, and I’ll keep you updated.
Hernia surgery.  The words carry with them such negative connotations and perhaps even images that I have to say the words just one more time—hernia surgery!
    I was in the doctor’s office some time in the middle of January for a cold that I had that wouldn’t go away and had the doctor check out this small bump in my lower abdomen…So yes, three weeks before Grease, over spring break nonetheless (it was the only time I could find to do it) I had hernia surgery!  Hernia surgery isn’t actually the worst thing though.  After I came home, I tried to eat solid food.  The worst was when the food came back out the way that it went in.  Stomach convulsions were quite painful seeing as how they were in the area where they’d just operated. Don’t even get me started on sneezing!  It hurt like hell.  I still get little ghost pains every once in a while after I’ve been working for a long time or after I do some very physical activity for a short amount of time, but oh well I guess.  Oh and before you ask, I don’t know for sure what caused it.  It could be the fact that I was hopping fences all of the previous summer while burying cable for TCI, or it could have been any combination of other things.  I don’t know, but I’m glad to have this taken care of anyway.
    May began the crazy time for me.  Prom was on May 2nd.  I went with a girl who actually asked me (while I was drugged up from hernia surgery—though I would have said yes anyway) and we had a great time.  We had such a good time in fact that we decided to stay together throughout the summer and even into the first couple of months of college.  (Just realized that I haven’t even said her name—it’s Paula)  We broke up not too long ago which is something I’m still a little confuncted (thanks to Jason for that word) about, but c’est la vie, I guess.  I actually got out of school and had formal checkout one week after Prom, so you’re probably thinking that I had lots of free time, but I was still involved with a show that was going to France and so had a great many rehearsals and fund raisers and everything else that goes along with a trip like that.
    May 23 I graduated from high school and remember the day seeming very surrealistic.  It was like this was what I had waited my whole life for, and it was here and what in the hell was I going to do now.  Only I didn’t really have time to let that set in because I graduated on Saturday, spent Sunday and Monday party-hopping, had rehearsals on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, performed the show Friday night and Saturday night, and left the airport at 8:30 on Sunday morning, May 31 for France.
    What can I say about Paris in this Christmas letter that will do it justice? (This letter is already too long? )  It was a very incredible trip, and truly deserves a letter unto itself.  The thing I will say about it is that the thing I enjoyed the most, more than seeing the Eiffel Tower or the Arc d’Triumph, was the time that I spent with the French students as well as the people.  Before I went I had heard that French people were rude to Americans, but in the ten days I was there, I never had anyone be rude to me that didn’t know me.  (People from the cast might have been rude to me, but that’s the way the cast was.)  It was truly an incredible experience which has brought about many new friendships for me, as well as given me a little different perspective on my life as a whole.
    Upon returning from France on the 10th, I had the 11th, 12th, and 13th to get caught up on sleep, and started pickup rehearsals for Chess.  After a week of rehearsals, we had two benefit (money-making) performances, and left for Lincoln on Sunday morning.  My mom played in the pit, so she drove a carload of us there (about an eight-hour trip), and although the people I was riding with disliked the ride, I didn’t think the scenery was really all that bad.
    Upon returning from Lincoln, I spent the rest of the summer just trying to remember what had happened during the previous months of my life.  I didn’t get a job, didn’t really do much of anything other than work around my house (which has plenty of work to be done around it…we live on two and a half acres), and try to spend some time with friends before they and I headed off to college (though I never could seem to get up to Colorado Springs before the summer was out).
School at UNC this first semester has gone really well.  I don’t have much to complain about.  My roommate is from Wisconsin and is a pretty laid-back guy, as well as are the other three guys who live next door (I live in a suite—five of us share a bathroom), so I really haven’t had any problems as far as the room situation is concerned.
    My classes included German 301, Intro. to Music, Men’s Glee Club, Madrigals, University Singers (what can I say?  I didn’t plan to be in so many choirs, it just happened.), "Antiquity and the Classical Age," and Africana Studies.  I ended up with a 3.6 and will actually be completely finished with my UNC General Education requirements by the end of this semester because of the nine credits I got from AP tests and because I was able to get into German 301, so I’m way ahead of where I need to be right now.  Nevertheless, I am taking 20 credits next semester which should just about kick my butt, but oh well.  Maybe that’s what I need right now…a good butt-kicking to put me back in place.  :<)   Included next semester is Macroeconomics, 6 credits worth of communications classes, German 302, German 116, German 252, the same choirs, and a class that is geared towards people that don’t know what they want to do with their lives and talks about careers and does personality profiles—that sort of thing.
    Also this semester, I’ve been working as a caterer for the University serving all the catered meals.  It’s better than working food service I think, though it’s hard for me to be in a position where I’m basically supposed to be invisible.  The pay is not great, but they are pretty flexible with working around my class schedule, so it actually works out relatively well for me.
    Being home for Christmas has been very nice for me.  I’ve tried to help out my family with things that are difficult for them to get done because they are so busy with jobs and school.  Of course, I’ve enjoyed spending time with my family and my best bud Deanna—my little sister.  More than that, it’s been nice to have my own space and my own time to just do things like sit down and write this letter without interruptions from the people who live down the hall who have decided that the dorms are a great place to play roller-hockey.  Not that my floor is bad or anything, I have actually made lots of friends on my floor, but I also think that it is very important for people to have their own time just to be alone with their thoughts, alone with God, and that is something that is difficult to do while living in dorms.  I plan to get an apartment next year with James Laguana (for those of you who know him) that is somewhere in the vicinity of campus, and not too expensive.  Shouldn’t be too difficult in Greeley, huh?
    I didn’t make any new year’s resolutions because I think that any time of the year is a good time to make a resolution as long as you are planning to stick with it, but for those of you who made resolutions, may you have the strength and desire to follow through on your promise.
    I hope that this letter finds you in good health, good spirit, and good will.  May you remember that nothing great (has ever been) achieved without enthusiasm!
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

    Best wishes for a wonderful 1999!  Make it the best.  You won’t get another chance this century!
 
Peace Always,
 

Jonathan Kraft
[email protected]

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