2010 Bad, 2011 Good

I'm barely hanging on, dreading that there's still one more day of this dreadful year. The only optimism I have is because I know everything will be better as soon as we hit that magic moment of midnight on January 1. It's a real turning point.

The first thing I'll look for in the morning is "2011" on the newspaper. That's what I've traditionally done, but now I usually look on the internet. That's how I know that it's really happened, that we've finally flipped over from misery to bliss.

When I was a kid, I got excited about seeing the old man with the scythe and the baby with the top hat. They put it on the front page of the paper back then practically every year. Back then, they dealt in old traditional images like that, the old man and the baby. I was always a little confused about how the baby became an old man in only one year, but in general I understood the symbolism. The old is dead -- good riddance -- the new has come.

To me, January 1 is the best day of the New Year. January 3 or 4 I usually think are kind of depressing, because the whole thing for the most part is over. Then when it's Jan. 9 you've lost track, and for all you know it might be the 8th or 10th. It's still the New Year but you're used to it. The only thing that used to mess us up was writing checks, putting the wrong year. But now that we do debit cards all the time, of course we don't even have to think about it.

I don't know if I want to do a "year in review" for the blog this year. I'm pretty sure I did one last year. Oh, what the heck, I'll do a short one:

I really can't remember what I was writing about at the beginning of 2010. I'll go look. Just glancing at a couple titles: January - Drive For Pride, when I was into lifestyle coaching. February - Vernon Hoff, Female Impersonator, that was just an anthology of clippings on a guy who left behind no extensive life story, none that I know of. March - I had a short series on collecting dog food labels. There's some real beauties there. April - I started my "Industrial Section" series that went on for 200 parts straight, so that takes us through May, June, July, August, September, and much of October. Of course that was a very major thing. October - The rest of October was spent floundering around, because the "Industrial Section" posts had worn such deep grooves in my brain. But then I introduced my blessed guru, Swami Masturbananda. November - I introduced the Pink Professor. Also I hit my 1000th post. December - I focused on Masturbananda and the Pink Professor. Toward the end, I essentially became the Pink Professor's boyfriend. But we're still working out the details of our relationship and don't have anything to announce yet.

Maybe 2010 wasn't so terrible, but it's nothing compared to what 2011 will be! Only one more day of a cloudy, terrible time.

Year In Review

Why look back?

I don't know. I'm just a looking back kind of guy. It goes with the territory when everything you do has an anniversary. I'm overly sentimental.

What all happened here, without me doing any research, just going by memory?

The highlight of the year -- one of the biggies -- was the fact that I was on hiatus for two or maybe close to three months. It was around March or April that it started. And it continued until I came off it. In the hiatus, the memorable one-dimensional character of Garrett Al was created. Named so to make him sound like Geritol. Look him up in the archives. What a character! Garrett Al, as I recall, made some sort of "play" for me, my affections, but was rebuffed and taken away by police.

There were other highlights. Two biggies come to mind. 1) The whole Grange Brotherhood (and Sisterhood) affair. This involved me taking on a nefarious rural association who was luring young men to their deaths, being kicked to death by assassin horses. There was a Peruvian connection, a queen. It was very exciting. I raced against the clock to solve the whole thing, finally doing something (I don't recall) to neutralize, then counteract the horses. It was exciting, but everyday was a struggle for survival.

The other biggie would be: 2) My tenure as a self help, self esteem, lifestyle sciences coach. For a while there I reigned supreme among the positive-thinking glitterati. I was putting it forth day by day, incredibly helpful themes and teachings, to prop up everyone's self esteem and make them feel better. I held forth with teachings that gave people the confidence to achieve. I called my efforts the "Drive for Pride," and it was very helpful to a lot of souls both forlorn and self-estranged.

I'm thinking back to what ended it. I had a teaching one day on having a "Spine of Steel" (or something). And someone took it hyper literally and set forth a rebuttal against me, a piece of criticism that sent me over the edge. I believe her argument was that spines are not actually made of steel and that no one should say they are. I tried to make the point -- I think I did -- that it was a figure of speech, but the damage was already done. My whole self esteem empire crumbled before me. I had no will -- none -- to go on after that criticism.

So the whole "Drive for Pride" was both a high point and a low point. It carried the seeds of its own destruction in it, unknown to me at the time. I really thought it might go on forever and that I would end up making a lot of money on it. But as it was, I didn't make a dime.

Those are the highlights. But there was lots of other things, miscellaneous things that should be mentioned, but with the restrictions of time, I can only say a couple things. Wasn't it this year that I had Old Faithful, the geyser, in my back yard? It seems like it was. Then they took it away.

And it seems like it was this year that I had the whole reverie involving Skidrow and fly by night carpet stores. In this year I know I definitely drove by a crummy carpet store and thought about its prospects. And, this is a true story, before the year was out they were closed, and apparently had gone on to another town to ply their evil trade.

I end the year with a hope ... a hope for a bright and engaging tomorrow ... May I be happy in the future, as happy as I can be, as happy as my imagination will allow me to be, until that eventual day when I have grayed up, my organs have declined and failed, and I finally pass away. That will be a terribly sad day. But when it gets here, I will have a lot of accomplishments to look back on and smile about. This year was one in a long series of such years that will eventually cause me to smile, when eventually I do fail and die. That day will come for me, I believe, just as it has come for countless others who even now are dead.

Days Are Stacking Up Everywhere

We're getting to the end of the year. It's almost 365 ex-days we've got stacked up everywhere. And with age, I'm getting quite a collection. I'm still tripping over a few months from earlier in the decade! And there's a few days and incidents from the '90s that still pop up now and then!

That's the way my life goes. I'll have a simple enough collection, something I'm passionate about, that seeks completion, then it becomes a behemoth and I think I should pare it back (if only I could), so I stack it up somewhere, get plastic totes, then implement a complicated inventory system to keep the totes straight. Next thing, I have a system of warehouses, storage facilities, safety deposit boxes, electric eyes for security, and I have to show two forms of ID and a thumbprint just to see it. I have to convince the guards I'm really me.

Even time is like that. I have plans for each day, then if I don't get around to it, my plans become backlogged, stoved up, itching either for release back into the wild or a quick disposal of their case. Some things you just have to part with. "If you really love it, you have to let it go." But I can't let you go because I love you too much. My thought processes say to me, How did I ever let prehistoric times go? Because fortunately I wasn't alive all these millions of years.

We need a self help group for "People Who Love Time Too Much."

There's a definite thought in there somewhere. Which is why worry about the times you've had when you don't worry about the times you didn't have? And someday you're not going to worry about the times you'll never see, so why let the visible ones get you down?

We've got another Happy New Year coming, right around the corner, and all the days of this present year still with us in memory. Plus the plans that were never realized, that now we need to let go, if only we can. I'd love to just forgive myself for not getting it done.

Maybe I'll do that. Just forgive myself for this and that. Then I'll have a whole massive collection of memories of forgivenesses. All catalogued and neatly arranged, until they start stacking up, falling against each other, and needing their own warehouse.

Local Man Celebrates New Year

The local man, centered in his own local activities, judges all things. On this holiday he has seen it coming. The old year drifts closer and closer -- dangerously close -- to its demise. This is known, predicted.

He remains as economical as ever, going to the store and checking out the bargains, near-bargains, and excessively marked up items in the snack aisle. Some chips are exorbitant, like in the $4.69 range. Others have a more appealing price to the local man, such as two for five bucks. He picks up one, some sort of "Restaurante" kind.

As for the salsa, it's neither marked up nor marked down. It's what it usually is when not on sale. Get a mild for Grandma, a hot for himself.

Then summer sausage of a type he hasn't seen before, Cervelat. It looks good enough to take a chance on.

As for drinks, there's a sparkling cider that the Martinette's (spelling probably off) have been making since 1868. They surely know what they're doing by now, so he picks up a bottle. It's only once a year.

Back home, I'm quite tired and don't make it to midnight. But that gave me today to dig in and work on some of this food.