(no subject)

On a whim, I went back just now and reread my blog entry from Christmas Eve last year, and was very amused to find that a year ago I was doing pretty much exactly what I am right now: sitting at home by myself, grinding away at the story, sipping brandy, going out at intervals into the wintry night for a smoke and some reflection.

It seems apt; this has largely been a year of marking time, stasis. Very little has happened in my life over the past year, and I think I needed that period of calm, because fall of 2001 was not a good time for me, in the mental-health sense. I think I needed some space to resettle/regroup, enough to get me to the point where I'm bored with being all settled and grouped, and am ready to kick out the jams.

I think 2003 is going to be a year of change. I'm ready to finish and post the goddam story, and move on to new stories that have been waiting in the wings. I'm ready to change jobs. I'm ready to change residence, climate, landscape. I'm ready to change where I buy my groceries and where I work out and the newspaper I read and the people I see every day.

Of course, it'd be nice if the universe cooperated with all this by letting me get the job I've applied for. I keep telling myself that I should have at least enough qualifications to get an interview, and I've always done very well at interviews; only once have I not gotten a job I really wanted, once I got to that stage. But there'll be no news on that front for at least two weeks, so I'm deep-breathing and refocusing.

Anyway, whatever happens with that opening, there'll be some changes made around here. That's the New Year's resolution, in a nutshell.