Year In Review

Why look back?

I don't know. I'm just a looking back kind of guy. It goes with the territory when everything you do has an anniversary. I'm overly sentimental.

What all happened here, without me doing any research, just going by memory?

The highlight of the year -- one of the biggies -- was the fact that I was on hiatus for two or maybe close to three months. It was around March or April that it started. And it continued until I came off it. In the hiatus, the memorable one-dimensional character of Garrett Al was created. Named so to make him sound like Geritol. Look him up in the archives. What a character! Garrett Al, as I recall, made some sort of "play" for me, my affections, but was rebuffed and taken away by police.

There were other highlights. Two biggies come to mind. 1) The whole Grange Brotherhood (and Sisterhood) affair. This involved me taking on a nefarious rural association who was luring young men to their deaths, being kicked to death by assassin horses. There was a Peruvian connection, a queen. It was very exciting. I raced against the clock to solve the whole thing, finally doing something (I don't recall) to neutralize, then counteract the horses. It was exciting, but everyday was a struggle for survival.

The other biggie would be: 2) My tenure as a self help, self esteem, lifestyle sciences coach. For a while there I reigned supreme among the positive-thinking glitterati. I was putting it forth day by day, incredibly helpful themes and teachings, to prop up everyone's self esteem and make them feel better. I held forth with teachings that gave people the confidence to achieve. I called my efforts the "Drive for Pride," and it was very helpful to a lot of souls both forlorn and self-estranged.

I'm thinking back to what ended it. I had a teaching one day on having a "Spine of Steel" (or something). And someone took it hyper literally and set forth a rebuttal against me, a piece of criticism that sent me over the edge. I believe her argument was that spines are not actually made of steel and that no one should say they are. I tried to make the point -- I think I did -- that it was a figure of speech, but the damage was already done. My whole self esteem empire crumbled before me. I had no will -- none -- to go on after that criticism.

So the whole "Drive for Pride" was both a high point and a low point. It carried the seeds of its own destruction in it, unknown to me at the time. I really thought it might go on forever and that I would end up making a lot of money on it. But as it was, I didn't make a dime.

Those are the highlights. But there was lots of other things, miscellaneous things that should be mentioned, but with the restrictions of time, I can only say a couple things. Wasn't it this year that I had Old Faithful, the geyser, in my back yard? It seems like it was. Then they took it away.

And it seems like it was this year that I had the whole reverie involving Skidrow and fly by night carpet stores. In this year I know I definitely drove by a crummy carpet store and thought about its prospects. And, this is a true story, before the year was out they were closed, and apparently had gone on to another town to ply their evil trade.

I end the year with a hope ... a hope for a bright and engaging tomorrow ... May I be happy in the future, as happy as I can be, as happy as my imagination will allow me to be, until that eventual day when I have grayed up, my organs have declined and failed, and I finally pass away. That will be a terribly sad day. But when it gets here, I will have a lot of accomplishments to look back on and smile about. This year was one in a long series of such years that will eventually cause me to smile, when eventually I do fail and die. That day will come for me, I believe, just as it has come for countless others who even now are dead.