Sunday, December 31, 2006

Happy eid, happy new year, etc.

Here it is. The end of another year.

That means that I haven't even adjusted to the idea of being 40 yet, and soon I'll be 41.

Time is more important as you age. Every single day I feel that I'm no closer to my goals hurts now. It used to not matter at all. I feel like I'm taking the GRE and nowhere near the end of the math section, and desperately checking my watch. I look around. The other students are relaxed, smiling. They already knew math, didn't have to re-learn it.

I seem to have wasted 2006. I worked a lot. I went into what Ax calls "powersave mode." I woke up, I worked, I slept. I recovered a little from 2005, some days moreso than others. For about ten minutes in April and a week in May, I was alive for real. The rest of the time was working, treading water, avoiding contemplating things that hurt, struggling to make ends meet. Letting auto-pilot sell the condo and send out postcards for Stalking the Wild Dik-Dik. Waiting.

What did I learn this year? Perhaps that you can leave your job, sell your home, go around the world, have your eyes opened to grand new things, accept great personal growth and evolve emotionally, trek around Africa, New Zealand, Australia, and Kuwait, and in the end, find yourself back exactly where you started.

I was trading e-mails with Roberta yesterday.

"Are you done with that job yet?" She asked me.

"No. I'm not even halfway through yet. I'm so sick of this. I work all the time. 2007 has GOT to be different."

"Amen," was all she wrote back. Roberta is a freelancer too.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Or, as Tommy Hancock (Tom X) in Austin says, "No matter where you go, there you are."

Have a good slide into the new year, as they say here in Prussia!

Matt Hollingsworth said...

Yeah, fuck work. I love my job, don't get me wrong. But, I can do a whole helluva lot less of it and get by. That's my aim for 2007; work less, play and travel more. And have sex too.

Sretna Nova Godina, Happy New Year!

Marie Javins said...

And here all this time I was blaming Bucakaroo Banzai. But apparently the quote is much older than that.

Anonymous said...

Well, except for Thomas a Kempis (and I'd want a second opinion on that translation), none of 'em are older than Tom, who became a hippie at the age of about 50 and has got to be 90 by now.

Anyway, I prefer Eisenhower's bit of wisdom:

"Things are more like they are now than they ever have been."

Something to remember tonight as we all sail into the future.

Marie Javins said...

Shannon is in town and is forcing me to go out and enjoy myself at a comic book party. Can you believe the nerve of that guy? And here I was perfectly content to wallow in the misery of New Year's Eve at home alone...