The year is ending. This has been sort of a disaster of a year for me and I’ve been reluctant to try to sum it all up. I guess now is as good a time as any though, so I can’t be accused of waiting until the absolute last minute.
From the girls moving out… to the guys moving in… to the guys moving out… it has been a revolving door down in Woonsocket. It’s never really been a stable place, but this is a lot of people in and out, around me, in one year. It’s been quite difficult, especially financially. But Sara has proven to be a great roommate, and hopefully the revolving door has stopped spinning for a while.
Early in the year, I felt some general dissatisfaction with my job, at least parts of it, and left the after-school day care, probably for good. Again, probably not a good financial move, as the position had pretty steady hours. It also put me in a weird position with some of the people I enjoyed working for (i just wasn’t enjoying the work). But the teen center is a good position, too, and I definitely enjoy it as much or more than the asdc. And I still have the team building/ropes and Andy to look forward to in the good weather.
These changes and general dissatisfaction with things in the winter led to a change in my overall lifestyle… by the spring, I was totally immersed in hanging out with friends as much as possible and “living.” Seriously, I cut my hair… this was drastic. I even rekindled an old love… but that didn’t really end up going so well. And what I thought was the logical course of action, going back to my old kind of lifestyle, didn’t go so well, either. So I found myself stuck in this foreign mindset and unable to focus very well. It was pretty depressing. I’ve started to be OK with where my head is at now, though, and have, at least, stopped agonizing and trying to figure it all out all day.
A bunch of stuff happened musically. I started getting into new music and rediscovering old music with the help of my Sirius radio. It’s been fun to really dig into artists’ catalogs and soak it all in. I did a lot of playing this year, too. Snakes was pretty active and when the guys moved in, I was involved in the beginnings of a new musical project with them, called Das Happening. Playing was fun and was really fun when I injected that does of “live a little” into my life. One of the reasons I wanted to do that was to try to recapture how fun it used to be when I played in Just For Sundae, back in the day. Unfortunately, with that breakdown and the lack of focus afterwards, playing was really difficult and not fun, because I couldn’t devote enough focus to it to do it as well as I wanted to… so I stopped playing. I dunno if, or when, I’ll be able to enjoy playing again.
The bands were not the only thing that was difficult to deal with because of my weird state of mind… I was definitely not in the best mental state when my Dad’s condition sent him into a coma and eventually took his life. Fortunately, there was a lot of family around, but I don’t feel like I was very helpful to any of them, the way that they were for me.
Those are the major events. Throw in the usual car troubles, computer breakdowns & hard drive failures, web host problems & web site moves/rebuilds, financial woes, blog-hopping, making a couple new friends & reconnecting with some old ones and you have my 2005. I’ve never really thought of the new year as a time to start over, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a year with so much stuff I’d rather just put behind me and forget about, either. Bring on 2006.
woot