The plan was, obviously, to start a new blog on the first day of the new year and post an entry every day. But the pressures involved in this scheme were too great – or maybe I just didn’t get around to it. But if I had, if I had sat down on New Year’s Day with the laptop’s screen blank before me I would have incurred the dreadful obligation to attempt lofty lucubrations concerning The Past and The Future, cataloging what had been meaningful and wretched about 2010 and getting all misty-eyed about what 2011 might bring. And nobody wants to plough through that kind of nonsense, do they? So lucky escapes all round, sez I.
But… Oh, okay. Just a little, seeing how it’s been a while since I addressed my people.
2010 had its crappy moments, that’s for sure. Captain Beefheart, Ari Up and Henryck Gorecki died, all of whom meant a lot to me during long and often overlapping periods of my life. Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and GOP monsters too numerous to mention amused but ultimately horrified me. I came down with pneumonia. Twice. I almost lost the sight in my right eye due to a detached retina (spent a fun month with a surgical bubble in my eye, looking down at the carpet through a rented massage chair). I feel a lot more mortal than I did last year. Luckily I had health coverage, thanks to that Kenyan communist’s deciding to hurt real Americans by subsidizing COBRA.
But I did get a job that I often enjoy, that is often a mindful challenge in a good way, and that doesn’t, as far as I can tell – and I have investigated – harm or exploit anyone or anything, myself included. More to follow on this subject, no doubt, as I don’t think I’ve ever written positively about work before. Don’t get me wrong, I’d still rather stay in bed all day but if I have to sit at a desk and stare at a computer screen this, at long last, is where I want to do it. My wife and kids continue to keep me happy and anchored. I didn’t write that novel, I didn’t even read that novel.
As for the new year, well that’s what this blog is for. Eat better, live better. Read more. Be less cynical but don’t be afraid to speak up when something is bullshit. Do stuff. Go places. The usual perky resolutions that get forgotten about mid-month….
And not come down with something snotty and feverish on the third. Because today I am unwell in that most uninteresting and viscous of ways, sneezing, coughing, slouching around in a lethargic state but unwilling to rest because I know I will feel worse if I do so. Pills have been gulped. But at least I’m managed to start this blog. And maybe I’ll be able to update it again before I take another sick day….
