"You do not have to be standing in metaphysical outer space to recognize that sending your valet off on a fifteen-mile walk through bandit-infested woods in the dead of winter to buy you a small bar of Turkish delight should yield precedence to letting him linger by his father's deathbed."

--Terry Eagleton, After Theory (2003).

2007, bitch-goddess.

The previous year turned out one of the most eventful (and frankly schizophrenic) I've spent in a long time. In the grand scheme of things, nothing very much changed. The country continues to decline, Bush continues his disastrous crawl through history and takes us with him (and much, much worse before it's all through, no doubt), the climate continues to worsen, Michigan's economy gets worse, and the state legislature is incompetent beyond description. And that's just the politics. As for my personal life, there was, I should say, a lot of good. I realized anew that I have some really wonderful friends, was part of two superb birthday celebrations, visited Chicago and Michigan's Upper Peninsula for the first time, got a second job, and found myself in a genuine romantic situation for the first time in nearly a decade. Then there's the bad to consider. My grandfather died, I had to quit the second job, and the romantic situation barely lasted a week.

On top of all that, it seems that a good number of my friends are probably leaving town next year, which, though depressing (the departure of one in particular will be especially hard to bear), is probably what they need to do, and makes me think of why the hell I've been here that long. There's this sense that my world's going through some sort of tectonic shift, and that some spell's beginning to dissipate. I first moved here with the intention of going to library school, before discovering how much I enjoyed cooking, and realizing how much more useful those skills might prove in the kind of genuinely post-industrial world we'll probably face over the next few decades. I've been at the same job now for over four years, by far the longest I've ever been anywhere. Ever since realizing my boss' failings, I've looked in fits and starts for another job, something I fervently hate doing. Every now and then I'd get a really cool co-worker or set of co-workers who would make my job genuinely fun and make me happy (or happier) to be there. Things changed even more in the spring of '05, when the Madison House shows began and I met so many of the friends I cherish today. The fact that I had a widespread social life outside of work--something that hadn't really happened on a large scale since high school--meant a psychic safety valve of sorts. Whether or not that will be the case in future is, in many ways, beside the point. I've been at the job--and in Ann Arbor--too long and I need to leave.

So that's the general plan, anyway. There are the usual resolutions--get in better shape, write more, volunteer more, eat better, but that's up top, and rightly so, I think. Come to think of it, I hope everyone has a happy New Year, too.