Is This Year Over Yet?

Good-bye, 2010! I say this in all sincerity and relief. In glancing backward at this year’s events, I can see that it was a time that afforded me the ability to make needed physical improvements (new energy-efficient windows) and an opportunity for personal growth (i.e., my current job situation). Keeping this mind, I have come to three conclusions:

The windows are fabulous.

Personal growth is overrated.

Most everything else in my year sucked!

One major aggravation this year was the passing of a close friend and mentor, Mary Kenny Badami. There’s no point in railing against the cosmos over this event, but I’ll probably continue to do so anyway. Mary had a wonderful life, dedicating it to improving communications among mankind’s many cultures. I miss her kind words of encouragement particularly given my current life crisis.

As I said...sucks, sucks, sucks!

The year began with an upper respiratory infection, not near enough alcohol, but the wonderful memory of attending a live performance of Cinematic Titanic. This year I am healthy and I am looking forward to consuming more liquor this New Year’s Eve. Our neighbors will greatly accommodate me in this goal with their annual party.

I hope to imbibe much this year, and once again as is my personal tradition, I will be clad in my Beer is proof that God loves us and wants to be happy sweatshirt. I will try my best to stay up past midnight, but I can foresee one scenario when I might have to leave the evening festivities early. If I consume too much booze, I may regale the otherwise happy party-goers with such acid bon mots as “Job security is an illusion!” At that point, I suspect my gracious hostess will ask me to leave. Oh, she’ll request that my sweatshirt stay as encouragement for the rest of them to party on, but I will have to go.

Sucks, sucks, sucks!

Now that I’ve glanced backward, I would be remiss if I didn’t look ahead to 2011. So, what can I improve? What shall I resolve to change in my life?

1. Get a job.

2. Continue my ongoing struggle to improve my health with regular trips to cardio rehab therapy and wiser food consumption.

3. Get a job with benefits.

4. Overcome my personal demons and terminal shyness by reaching out and networking in order to find new and wonderful opportunities in a business world continually in a state of flux. (Okay, this sentence belongs in a resume. Sorry...)

5. Terminate my temporary retirement by developing my talents and marketing them that is advantageous to myself and the world at large. (Ah yes, somewhere W.C. Fields is smiling at the wording of this resolution!)

6. Find affordable health insurance for both me and my wife.

7. Overcome the sinking feeling that the concept of affordable health insurance is an illusion.

8. Continue writing this blog with less use of explanations-of-hard-to-read-concepts-by-using-hyphens.

9. Seek funding to continue our ongoing list of property improvements: installation of a water softening system, chimney repair, house painting, and driveway recoating. (See numbers 1, 3 and 5 to achieve this goal.)

So it is time, long overdue, to tell 2010 to-get-the-hell-out-of-here and welcome the promise of 2011.

Sucks, sucks, sucks, sucks...

(Thank you for reading and here’s hoping the future is brighter for all of us!)