Ornoth

I know it’s tedious to read about everyone’s end-of-year natterings, so I’ll keep mine brief.

Having just gone through a very difficult period, I’m naturally inclined to write 2005 off as just a series of very painful events. However, when I went to make a list of the good and the bad, I discovered a very surprising and substantial imbalance toward the good. This year in particular this list seems to really help keep things in perspective.

So here’s my lists:

So that’s the scoop. As you can see, the positives far outweigh the negatives, even if there were a couple really, really terrible things that happened this year.

Well, hasn't this been an interesting month? Unfortunately, you haven't heard much about it, because I don't tend to go on about day-to-day stuff, and the stuff that was significant required the approval of a bunch of people to share, so I just bagged it. It's too bad, because some of it was truly amazing, but those emotions are gone now.

It all started out amazingly well. First I got to see my favorite reggae band, Culture, with my buddy Atticus. Then I made a weekend trip to Detroit to stay at a B&B on the shores of Lake Huron with four very close friends. The intensity and intimacy of the connections we forged were absolutely humbling. I would have written a great deal about this amazing experience, but I felt limited by my friends' privacy concerns. Let's just say that it was pretty mind-blowing.

Even through the middle of the month, things were pretty damned good. Inna and I took a two-day foliage trip through the Berkshires that was really marvelous. And the very next day I got to meet one of my magazine's newer writers for the first time, which is always a treasured experience. We got along pretty well and had a good time together.

But the nights got longer and colder and we had our first light snow squall, and things really seem to go to hell. The intense connection I shared with my friends in Detroit completely soured when I discovered one of them lying to me. From there, things rapidly spun out of control, until the whole group is now making completely baseless accusations about me, telling me what I think and feel about them. And their little fantasies are complete fabrications of their paranoid insecurities. While I think it'll blow over, it's causing me endless frustration and anger, which are emotions I usually have no difficulty controlling, but not so right now.

At the exact same time, I developed a large fluid swelling in my right knee that was diagnosed as pre-patellar bursitis. While it's not an immense inconvenience, it does limit how much walking I can do, and prohibits me from doing any cycling at all. Now, two weeks later, the symptoms haven't changed at all – if anything they've gotten worse – and I find that, too, frustrating.

Today was, of course, also my 39^th birthday. Happy birthday, indeed! Between having class in the evening and the limitations my bursitis places on my mobility, I wasn't able to do anything special. That, of course, left me free to dwell on my close friends' betrayals and our ongoing disputes.

And my usual end-of-year angst plays into all of this. The holidays are always the most painful, difficult time of year for me, mostly due to the obligations of family, friends, work, and school. And having a Halloween birthday, this is the official start of the holidays for me. I'm feeling pressured by my obligation to go to Maine to visit my mother, and I have just two weeks to do all four of my projects for my Quark class. As Inna has helped me see, I have a very dysfunctional relationship with "obligation", so the holidays and end of semesters really stress me out.

But I guess it's not all bad. I turned in a pretty good art project tonight (which only one other student out of ten completed), and I cracked open my Craggymore 12, which will soon be followed by a CCIC chaser. Party on. <shrug>