Into the Bin with You, 2006

2006 was shit. That’s the whole review. I could do a proper year-in-review—collect the old posts, arrange them into something shaped like reflection, write nice sentences about what I learned—but I don’t want to look at 2006 any longer than I have to. Setbacks. Depression. Things that cracked and didn’t heal. The year gets the bin.

What I want is to face forward. Ana and I went shopping yesterday to fix my diet, which has needed fixing for a while. I am constitutionally, deeply lazy—my most vigorous physical activity is walking around with an iPod—and the gut I’ve assembled over the years isn’t going anywhere through exercise I’m never going to do, so the food angle it is. January 16th, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade launches, and I intend to be at my desk eating a salad. Later in the year Mac OS X Leopard arrives, at which point Windows Vista can quietly pack up and leave.

I’ve also started delivering pizzas in the evenings to fund my way through finishing school, which I’ve been neglecting and need to stop neglecting. The money helps. The long hours alone on the road put me too much inside my own head, which is a mixed blessing at best. Hamburg keeps appearing in there—a gravitational pull toward the city I can’t fully explain yet, but that feels like something real.

2006: stagnation, personal wreckage, long silences. A few friendships somehow strengthened under the pressure. That’s the only honest accounting I can give it. Now go.