I don’t make new year’s resolutions. I just like to believe in things enough to make them happen. So this year I think I’ll publish a game and fall in love and be more still and be more me.

Have a good one, everybody! Don’t die.

Because I think anonymous comments are cowardly and create a built in dead end to any kind of dialogue, I’ve instituted comment moderation. Any post where the poster is unidentified/unfamiliar will just get deleted before it appears on my blog. The alternative is making all my friends sign up for an account here, but I don’t want to do that.

10:57 and I can’t sleep.

Is loneliness a kind of survival instinct, a desire to rejoin the strong numbers of the tribe for fear of the wolves? Is loneliness a product of our modern society? Technology allows vast numbers of the unfit and unhealthy to survive on their own.

We’re not born alone and we usually grow up in some kind of group. Even if you’re grown in a Hasbro gene vat, there’s a few other backup copies in there too. But where is the tribe now? We’re letting technology create these new templates simply for the sake of it. Paradigms aren’t shifting because we’re on the cusp of some new era. It’s because someone is selling something. And all blog irony aside, we’re a generation away from forgetting what we offered up on the altar in exchange for our digital “communities.”

I think something I need to seek out this coming year is a different social context to express all these emotions. It was like I had my chest blown out last week and now it has more capacity. I raged uncontrollably in a way that still frightens me. All the usual restraints were gone and I just threw a violent screaming tantrum. This is where too much honesty can be unkind. I don’t ever want to tell her how much I hated her that night and how angry I felt. I’ve suddenly developed quite a temper, screaming at the computer, almost smashing things. But somehow I feel *better* than before, like these things are okay.

And I got my birthday wish. I let it all go, I let them go, I let myself go. And now I see that anything I feel for her is because I allow myself to feel it, not because of fate or some underlying damage. For several hours, I *saw* her. Everything loathsome and wrong and hurtful and damaged and psychotic. And I hated her and I hated myself for ever letting her affect me. I raged and raged, letting all this shit pour through me. I couldn’t stop it. It wasn’t something I’d wish for anyone to see. I woke up on the floor, not sure of where I was.

And when I see her, I feel lighter. And man does she piss me off. And I still love her, but it feels like something tangible and something I’ve decided for myself, not some ephemeral glow outside of my control. But it was easier the other way.

Lots of wonderful things happened this Christmas! There was great food, laughing, photos, walking to see all the lights, putting out the stockings and Santa gifts, secret plans, sleeping fitfully, waking on Christmas day and making breakfast, opening gifts, playing with said gifts, napping, seeing Mirrormask again, mulled wine and then home again. Ananda got her drum set and Joey got his XBox 360 and I felt like I had pulled off a masterful plan!

“33″ is the name of the first episode of Battlestar Galactica, season one. It’s also how old I turned a few days ago. There was a cake and a birthday wish. And, like some kind of weird 80s after school special, my wish came true.

I feel like I’ve lived a whole lifetime in one week. I’ve witnessed such horrible, astonishing revelations. I’ve been confronted with the core issues, dissolved multiple illusions, and revisited more plot threads than anything “previously on Lost…”

I felt things fall away from me with a clank, like some heavy, rusted, leaden thing.

Wine tonight, I babble. ‘Night.

Ryan let me know that one of my logos appeared in a news story in the Montgomery Advertiser.

I’ve been looking for a song to serve as a soundtrack for these musings, for this week. All the old standards just didn’t suffice. But then it came to me.

Here lies the answer and end to the quest.

Bad
-U2

If you twist and turn away
If you tear yourself in two again
If I could, yes I would
If I could, I would
Let it go
Surrender
Dislocate

If I could throw this
Lifeless lifeline to the wind
Leave this heart of clay
See you walk, walk away
Into the night
And through the rain
Into the half-light
And through the flame

If I could through myself
Set your spirit free
I’d lead your heart away
See you break, break away
Into the light
And to the day

To let it go
And so to fade away
To let it go
And so fade away

I’m wide awake
I’m wide awake
Wide awake
I’m not sleeping
Oh, no, no, no

If you should ask then maybe they’d
Tell you what I would say
True colors fly in blue and black
Bruised silken sky and burning flag
Colors crash, collide in blood shot eyes

If I could, you know I would
If I could, I would
Let it go…

This desperation
Dislocation
Separation
Condemnation
Revelation
In temptation
Isolation
Desolation
Let it go

And so fade away
To let it go
And so fade away
To let it go
And so to fade away

I’m wide awake
I’m wide awake
Wide awake
I’m not sleeping…

Damn these blogs. Behold our fossil record. My words, a decade old, frozen in the amber of Usenet. I am not one to take photographs, preserving time. I believe in the sacredness of the moment, a soul that cannot be captured. So I do not write for the sake of preserving my thoughts, but the mechanism preserves them even so.

In thinking about how we have timeshifted ourselves in blogs, I realized that some people timeshift *me* in their minds, interacting with an archived version of myself.

There is a version that has never done drugs or gone to bed with strange women.

There is a version that is still a childhood friend.

There is a version that is still in love with her.

There is a version that has not grown, learned and healed.

There is a version where there is still a tower.

And then there’s Me. I’m standing over here. Put that thing down and look.

You stupid fuck.

-Ro.