New Year’s Resolution

I have but one New Year’s Resolution this year, and that is to get back to writing in this journal more frequently. To that end, I have put it as a task in Outlook, so at least I’ll have that empty check box staring me in the face.

There’s really too much to catch up on all the things that have happened since the last time I made an entry here. But some of them will show up as I review the pluses and minuses of the year, in a moment.

First I should just tie up one loose end: The rest of my California trip went wonderfully. As I expected, Jon didn’t have anything for me right away in the Real World universe. But he figured something might show up in the New Year, so we’ll keep in touch. For the rest of the week, I just got to relax and hang out with friends, which was wonderful. Especially great was meeting, at last, the wife and toddler son of my old friend Jason Sands, to whom — it could fairly be said — I owe my career in documentary television. It was also wonderful having dinner with Curt Saplot. Curt and I dated, like, ten years ago, and he just keeps getting better and better looking, as well as growing as a person. *Sigh* What a great guy.

Anway, now on to my review of 2001.

On the minus side:

A friend of mine, Doug Small, was murdered a couple of months ago. Doug and I dated a couple of times; it didn’t work out but we still were friendly when we ran into each other. Doug had the misfortune of hiring the contractor from hell to work on his house. They got into a dispute over shoddy workmanship, and the guy shot him! It was all over the papers here in Washington, as you might imagine. First Doug was missing. It took quite a few days for his friends to convince police to investigate, but once they did, the trail led pretty quickly to this contractor, who is now in jail. They think the contractor might also have killed his wife years ago, but they don’t have a body or any proof. And in a really sad coda, I heard yesterday while I was working in the WRC newsroom from the police beat reporter, Pat Collins, that Doug’s estranged father — who was in total denial about his son’s sexual orientation — took the body back to North Carolina and buried it, in direct contravention of Doug’s will. I guess the family can do whatever it wants, right?

There were also a lot of other things to hate about 2001. On the macro scale, the terrorist attacks of 9-11 and everything that followed have changed American life profoundly, and not for the better. In my little world, my step-father is fighting cancer. For the first time in my life, I was broke and am now heavily in debt, including a fair chunk of change I owe to the IRS. My career and insurance plans have been stymied to a large extent by the recession. And what little romantic movement there was this year went nowhere. All in all, an annus horibilis, as my friend the Queen said a few years back.

On the Plus Side:

There were, of course, some nice things about the year, large and small. I still like living in Washington, though who knows how long that will continue to be possible. I had another wonderful Christmas in Colorado with my sister and her family. It was great seeing my niece and nephew, but my Mom and Step-dad decided not to travel from San Francisco, and their absence was keenly felt. Let’s see, what else was good? Oh, and I got a Compaq Ipaq PDA about a month ago. Playing with that has been fun.

But on the whole, when you balance the ledger, 2001 was definitely not among my top ten years. It would definitely rank more toward the bottom. So I’m glad to be shut of it. Here’s to a better 2002: Year of the Palindrome.