Complex Numbers

Eve

New Year's gives an opportunity to reflect and project. I've spent the last few days in relative solitude, but I haven't found answers (mostly because I've been playing Fallout 3 instead of reflecting, projecting, writing, working, planning, sleeping, eating...)

Reflections

For me, 2008 sucked big, hairy, greasy, moldy donkey balls. Oh, there were breaks from the suck, but for the most part, vacuum.

Certainly, it could have been worse. It was worse for a lot of people, but I'm not that good at empathy, and they're not Me.

The economy went to shit, and took my company with it. Part of the hazards of doing business, it is. I take some comfort in knowing that had I been working for someone else, I'd have been laid off, most likely, long before now. As it is, my company barely made money; hence, I barely made money.

I spent most of the year in severe pain. This is better now, but it's not great. I don't know if it'll ever be great again.

Dad got sick and then died, and I've been having to deal with the resulting paperwork ever since.

I still haven't been published.

On the bright side (every silver lining has a cloud, you know), I have great friends, both here and in the "real" world, and I'm still married, and I don't have any kids to complicate things further.

And really, I have everything that I need, so why should I bitch about this other stuff?

Projections

I'm going to go WAY out on a limb here and say that 2009 will be a better year. I may end up a year from now eating those words, but for once I'm cautiously optimistic. It's not that the economy can't get worse - it can, and probably will. It's not that my back will magically get better - but at least I have some confidence that it won't get much worse. Of course, one's father can only die once, so that isn't going to happen again (Mom died back in '99).

So I'm asking myself, what do I want?

Do I want my company to do better? I don't know - that would mean more work, which goes against my basically lazy nature.

Do I want it to tank completely? I don't know - I like having money. The more money you have, the more money you CAN have, and it represents security against times when you're NOT making money. You know... like NOW.

Do I want my back pain to go away? Yes, but at what cost? Some people say to make it go away I'd have to have surgery, which means a period of recovery with even worse pain, and I've never been one to trade short-term downside for long-term upside.

Do I want to be published? Sometimes I think so. Other times I feel like it would lock me into something. I don't know. It's very confusing.

Do I want to be happy? That's too nebulous a goal. What would make me happy? I don't know.

What do I want?

I don't know, and that's the honest truth.

I want things to be automatic, so I don't have to work for them. Unrealistic.

I want to spend my days on a Caribbean beach, drinking rum and staring at the ocean. I imagine that would get old fast.

I want to keep the house I inherited from my father, the house where I (arguably) grew up. But the upkeep and taxes on that may be prohibitive.

I want to have better relationships with my wife and my friends. But I'm a geek - I don't know anything about human relationships. I'd rather play video games or design spreadsheets. Besides, that's like work.

I want to lose more weight, but the plain truth is I love to eat and derive great pleasure from it, and I find nothing wrong with pleasure.

I want to stop having these struggles with myself, to quit battling myself for every choice I have to make.

I want things to be better, but I don't have the first idea how to make them so.

Well.

I suppose it'll just have to happen by itself.


Happy New Year to all of you fine readers, and may all of your problems have easy solutions.