Going, going... GONE! And what a bender it was.

So there went 2004. Poof!

That really should be more profound. “Poof!” just doesn’t do the year much justice. I should do a better job at shouting out to last year, for many things happened which require more… profound… ness.

My girlfriend moved in with me this year. This is more than a milestone for me, it is a conquest over my own fears of intimacy (whatever that means). Really, it is important for me because it signifies that I am not the seven year-old toy monger that I was a year before. I now have to share my living space, which is the most sacred of spaces to me. It is where I am who I am, all the time while there. No hiding, no ducking, no shirking. And now she is an audience to my own “theatre of the broken”. It is a beautiful thing, and it happened in 2004.

I lost the friendship of someone who I thought was a close friend. Everyone experiences the loss of a few friends of the opposite sex, whenever you enter into a relationship. You get serious with someone, and a select few people disappear from your life because they were only there for their own benefit. Usually, these are surface-friends to begin with, so the cut is not very deep. But I thought this person liked me for who I am, not who they expected me to be, for well over a decade. Apparently I miscalculated the value of our friendship, and it has been a frustrating loss. This disappointment occurred in 2004.

I started jogging last spring. I have enjoyed my time out on the trails, my dippings into runners’ high, and the general feeling of health associated with controlled physical excursion. I started getting my jog on, in 2004.

The IRS decided to kick the living crap out of me this past year. For those who know me, this should come as no surprise. Since my teenage years I have been involved in various business ventures and “high finance” activities without the benefit of mentor, accountant, or tax lawyer. I have always done my best to account for such activities within the confines of law and the tax code… but some items are just so damn gray. It is a wonder that I made it this far. The IRS brought a slight miscalculation on an old tax record of mine to my attention during 2004, and it has been a tenuous existence for me ever since.

I stopped DJing. I no longer have the equipment to do so. It is a brave new world for me, and I am looking forward to what I will do with my time. I shed my most prized hobby (again) in 2004.

I stopped drinking for 36 days, back around February. Prior to that experiment with sobriety, I would have denounced such plans to go dry as both self-destructive, and doomed to failure. I am proud to say that I discovered many things about myself during that time. I learned that my head is not necessarily more clear without booze. I learned that I still sleep like shit when sober. I learned that many times I drink in order to make the world more interesting to me. I learned that I don’t give two shits what opinions drunken people have, and that no one should put much weight in mine. I learned that beyond the dimly-lit horizons of my daily life and beyond my ambitions in business, humor, and entertainment: I am interested in enjoying my time on this planet above all other things. That this is a selfish notion, continues to elude me. Sometimes a stiff drink aides in my quest for entertainment, but it should never be my sole source. I gained this grain of sober intuition while living through 2004.

I continued to feel the importance of my friendships in 2004. Bonds were made, strengthened, and tested during the year. There were many rekindlings as well. I have always felt that my friends occupy the same space in my mind that many reserve strictly for blood-relatives. In fact, I would put good money on the notion that most of my friends place their family high above their friendships. Not that I am against such a practice, or that I require my friends to treat me in-kind. Everyone has their reasons for prioritizing their life-relationships, and I have no desire to discredit anyone else’s methodology. But 2004 bolstered my method, and my friends continue to pull whale-weight in my life. Cheers to reinforcement in 2005.

During the course and events of 2004, I realized that I MUST do what interests me, or I lose interest in life as a whole. Even if the risks do not make sense, or the payoff: nonexistent. Sometimes, you must burn in order to force yourself to rebuild. I go stale otherwise. This blog (another creation of 2004) sits alongside my essays, short stories, babbling prose, and the three long stories (novels? Whatever they’re called.) as evidence that I am continuing to search for whatever it is that floats my boat. When I stop looking… I better be carried by six.

I hope your 2004 was as beneficial and interesting to you as mine was for me. I hope 2005 is your best yet, and that you drink to be merry, and don’t marry while drinking. Or something like that. And pay your taxes right, for the love of all that is holy. Fuck…

Damn you mis-filed taxes!