"you owe nothing to the past but wasted time
to serve a sentence that was only in your mind"
[Beck, "End of the Day"]

Well, the holiday season is just about done. Xmas was here and gone, and the New Year's Eve party was a smash (and a considerably better time for me than last year). Mark and Andrew's visit is done, and they're safely back in Montreal/Toronto. Tracey is in from Norway, and I'm very much enjoying spending some time with her. Today is a day of rest (and cleaning), after the long spree of partying and socializing and so on and so on. Tomorrow the new year begins for real, as stores re-open, people head back to work, and I resume my job searching.

This is, of course, the part where I'm supposed to look back on the past year with some deep contemplative gaze, examine who I was and who I've become, and wax poetic about how my evolution as a person has come so far. Sadly, I'm not in that poetic (or waxy?) a mood. And while I'd love to look back on 2003 and say I did so much and came so far, that's not really the case. I do think I spent a considerable amount of it soul-searching. But overall, 2003 was really not that good a year for me. I was basically knocked down, and haven't really gotten back up yet, which is something I certainly hope to rectify in 2004.

I began 2003 by waiting for my girlfriend to wake up so I could tell her about the terrible things she'd said to me the night before in a drunken stupor, and which she'd no doubt remember (and I'd no doubt never forget). By the end of January I was single again. By the end of February I was unemployed. By the end of March I was moving out of my apartment and into a room in Dave's house. At the end of December, yesterday, I was still single, unemployed, and living with Dave. (Carol ended things yesterday, though I'm not broken up over it or anything, as it was an inevitability. In fact, the timing is kind of fitting, really.) As I said - knocked down, and not yet back up.

But 2004 is a whole new year, and I'd like to think a whole new opportunity to change my life in positive directions, get back up, dust myself off, and elevate my day-to-day happiness. And in that spirit, my New Year's Resolutions:

• Renew and strengthen old friendships, and form new ones. Be it 30s living, or an emotional retreat on my part, I've drifted away from some of my closest friends this past year, and all-but-eliminated them as a mood-elevating impact on my life. I need them back. My spirit does not soar without the love of good friends to hold it aloft.



• Eat better. Between the crockpot, food processor, and various new recipe books (and the need to stop eating out just to save money), I'd like to eat better. The side effect, hopefully, will be to shed about 10-15 pounds, once again reducing or eliminating my back and stomach problems.



• Get a job. I imagine I'll end up back in the IT industry for the time being, and then from there I'll start exploring other alternatives. But changing careers now, while I'm running out of time and money, is not viable.



• Get a girlfriend. Surely some lovely young intelligent, witty, attractive woman out there needs a passionate, loving man like myself in her life, to show her that women can and should be treated with respect, alleviate her tension with the occassional back or foot massage, and demonstrate for her just what heights of endorphine-high good cunnilingus can provide. I just need to find her and explain all that. Sadly, the job will likely have to come first, since women don't tend to date unemployed men.



• Get my own place. As much as Dave and I get along living together, I will eventually need a place I can call my own, with a room to be "my sanctuary". It needs to be someplace where I feel safe and comfortable, and where the outside world stays at bay so that I can unwind and think. The job obviously has to come first, and I imagine the girlfriend might too.

I could probably come up with another five or ten things, but Thomas Edison once said if you can do ten things at once, do five instead and do them well. He was quite right. So I'll focus on these. They are, after all, life-changing enough, and stand better without having something trivial like "make my bed more often" appended.

Oh, I guess I could have added "write more". I would like to write more. If I would like it to be a possible carreer path, I'd best start making it a habit again, hey?