2006

Alrighty, it's 2006 wrap-up time. Yes, I'm a little late, but things are just now coming to me about this past year, so here goes.

2006 was my first full year away from Texas and in a new place. I wasn't homesick, but I did sort of lose my way for a time. As I've made painfully obvious in this blog the past eight months or so (and to some of my long-suffering friends), I haven't been writing since around April. What's strange is that I knew it was obviously affecting me, but I didn't know the extent of it until two weeks ago, when I began writing again. I guess I didn't take writing seriously enough, or give it enough credit, until it was gone. Since I have never been published, I always hesitate to say, "I'm a writer." It makes me feel somewhat fraudulent to say that phrase to somebody, even when I think about all the time and thought and effort I put into it. If I'm not that, I'm really nothing at all. Make sense? So when it was gone...I was sort of gone, too.

Something big happened right around the time I quit - I'm not sure if that was what made me quit, or if the big thing happened because I quit. It doesn't really matter anymore. What matters is that I figured it out, finally. So when I say if I'm not a writer, I'm really nothing at all, I mean that. Because the past eight months, I didn't have a clue where I went. I was clingy to people I didn't want to be clingy with; some months it was very difficult being alone (totally alien feeling); I was on a search to find something I thought I wanted, hell-bent on finding this thing and making it work and just drying up and blowing away if it didn't. And it wasn't. working.

When it came back, the drive to write, the thought process I had so missed, all of the bullshit over the past months from 2006 just fell away. All of that shit; that shit that simply wasn't me. All of the things (and people) I had wanted so badly over those certain months, all of that energy and time and thought wasted on them just pffft, into thin air like vapor.

Around the same time this was happening, I had my review at work. I was petrified, just knowing it would be awful; just knowing my boss was going to hand me a pink slip or something along those lines. The work has been interesting and challenging, but it is a very new area for me, and I haven't been able to 'stretch' comfortably and really take it on with confidence, and feel good about the perks surrounding this particular job. But the review went well; my boss and I agreed on my weaknesses and my strengths; there were no surprises, I got a raise I'm happy with. (Although work was a total bitch last week and will be a bitch for the next three, but that's not really the point right now!)

So finally, the important things are coming back together fittingly for the New Year. Funny how that happened. Perspective is a wonderful thing, and when it's gone, and you just can't seem to get a clear view on your life, things fall apart. Add to that job worries and the thing you love to do almost more than anything else in the world suddenly disappearing, and you're in for a world of discomfort.

Now if I could just get some sleep, that would be really swell.

Now, a wrap-up of books and movies, because I feel like it, and because my friend N does it on his blog and I'm totally copying him!

These are in no order; just the ones I enjoyed the most.

Favorite books read this year (not published in 2006 - sorry, I'm not that current!):
1. Drinking: A Love Story - Caroline Knapp
2. White Noise - Don Delillo

These were the only stand-outs. There was a lot of crap, like Ethan Fromme by Edith Wharton and To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway. And I like Hemingway!

Favorite movies of 2006:
1. Dreamgirls
2. Little Children
3. The Departed
4. Little Miss Sunshine
5. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America to Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
6. Hollywoodland

Movies I haven't seen yet but that I know will be really good and would no doubt have been added to my stupid list here if I had seen them in time: The Illusionist, Half Nelson, and the Painted Veil. And the Prestige is definitely worth a mention. But I had to throw Borat in there because that movie was so offensively hysterically funny that my stomach was sore the next day from laughing so hard.

These are the shittiest movies I saw from 2006:
1. Apocalypto (good grief, Mel. You directed Braveheart? Are you sure?!)
2. All the King's Men (good if you need a nice long nap.)
3. The Wicker Man (funny without meaning to be - it's actually worth watching because it's so damn goofy.)
4. Factotum (okay, it's not shitty, but I was vastly disappointed - probably because I'm a Bukowski fan.)
5. Short Bus (again, not shitty, but damn disappointing because I was expecting something as good as Hedwig and the Angry Inch.)
6. The Black Dahlia (definitely shitty - if you want to see just a flat-out bad movie, this is the one. If you want to see actors with no chemistry portray love scenes, this is your movie - Josh Hartnett + Hilary Swank = 2 wooden sticks rubbing together, no smoke, no fire; Josh Hartnett + Scarlet Johanssen = 2 wooden sticks rubbing together, funny to watch. Hey, maybe it's just Mr. Hartnett!)