There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way.

I've decided to drop off-line.  I'm finally quite dissatisfied with the virtual world and the very thought of ever achieving anything remotely meaningful online.  Maybe it's the first steps towards full blown depression, but I've lost interest in a lot of things that used to interest me.  And sadly, I've found nothing really to fill in the gaps. 

Usually I spend Sundays watching football, but I've lost interest in that.  And then I would follow up with reading various articles on sports web sites about who accomplished what, why teams won or lost, lots of commentary.  But I'm losing interest in that, too.

I feel I need to keep track of where my money goes because this year, I've gotten deeply in to debt and I'm now in the process of re-financing my home equity line of credit, increasing the line, because I've hit my max.  I made only the minimum monthly payment on my credit card.  I've been late paying my mortage and my line of credit.  I've signed up for two of those 0% interest credit cards which come due in the next 6-12 months, and I really don't know how I'll pay them off.  I've blown too much money on options that have all expired worthless.  I really thought Elan would have taken off by now.

I have trouble staying on task and focusing without my mind wandering.  I think I need to work at training my mind to be, well, more single-minded.  Maybe I should take up meditation.

I've got a variety of addictions I need to fight:  wasting time (porn, video games, web-surfing), secrets, multi-tasking, gambling (stock market), sugar, procrastination (avoiding productive behavior at home and at work), and bingeing.

I'm likely headed for disaster, financially, unless Elan comes through for me. 

I'm looking at my accomplishments for the year compared to by goals for 2006, and of course I come up short.  Somehow I always set seemingly reachable goals that in hindsight appear to be rather lofty.  I guess I'm more thinking-oriented than action-oriented. It's always around this time of year that I reflect on what I've done in the past year and want to toss aside December and the remains of November, to view with bright eyes, the coming year.

Always thinking, "this year, it will be different!"

And yet in the back of my mind, also thinking, "we'll see".

My accomplishments for 2006:
Got married, went to Hawaii for nearly two weeks
Learned how to swim
Got a dumpster, threw out a lot of junk
Attended a film festival
Took a Tai Chi class
Took a yoga class
Traded stock options

Many goals fell by the wayside. 

Goals for 2007:
Bike 1000 miles
Lose 50 pounds (I'm 210 now, and I'm no longer fitting into my size 38 pants)
Exercise 3 times per week
Practice swimming
Buy a kayak and go kayaking on the river
Publish a book of poetry
Keep a daily journal (about 15 minutes)
Keep track of all of my expenses (where does my salary go, anyhow?)
Travel to a foreign country
Visit the southwest
Go camping
Get back into yoga with Veronica
Make new friends via Meetup or Hiking or Bicycling groups

I wrote this piece earlier this year called, "I am 35".  And now I'm 36.  Soon I'll be looking back on being 36 and wonder what I really accomplished towards some of my life goals, and then kick myself and then feel full of regret for all that could have been.  I don't want to live my life like that.

I keep thinking about what ifs, and thinking about what I would do if I were completely on my own.  And then I put the important people back into the equation, and see what's really holding me back from doing what I really want to be doing.  And inevitably, while I want to blame others for me not doing what I say I want, or going where I say I want to go, really I'm to blame for my failures to realize my potential.

scattered memories
a grey past
lost time
not remembering what I did a week ago
anything longer than that ... a defnite haze
pictures help
journals help
when I remember to record the moment

a jumble of images
like a jigsaw puzzle
I'm not sure how they all fit together
I think I'm missing some of the pieces
sometimes I focus too much attention on one piece
and forget that there is an entire puzzle
that it's a part of

a lot of time I just coast along
not even really aware that there is
this incomplete picture
or maybe I realize it
and don't want to think about it

it can't be like this for everyone, right?

I hide the truth from others
so naturally
secrets about what I do know
and what I don't
Do I hide the truth from myself?

What have I rented from NetFlix in the past 30 days?

Saved! - senior at christian high school gets pregnant while trying to 'cure' her friend of homosexuality.  she then gets to see who her true friends are.
Blade Runner - the director's cut lacked Ford's narration, and I think it really affected the movie in a negative way.  I re-rented Blade Runner, trying for the original film release, but instead got the Director's Cut again.  Maybe I'll look for it from Blockbuster.
Sky High - superheroes just learning their powers go to high school, where kids are determined to be either Sidekicks or Heroes. 
Mazes and Monsters - Tom Hanks as a confused gamer who takes the game a little too far.  They didn't play how I played when I was in high school. 
Lonesome Jim - Twenty- or Thirty-something feeling depressed, unable to make it on his own, goes home to live with his parents.  I barely finished the movie.  Sad that my dad felt that I would somehow identify with the movie.
Hard Candy - fell asleep in the first 30 minutes.  Too much conversation, too much drawn out suspense.  Could have been a 20 minute film, easily.
Saving Grace - widow finds that her husband's debts are too much to bear, so she goes into the pot-growing business.
The Girl in the Cafe - laugh out loud funny movie about a shy and lonely man with self-deprecating humor wrestling with loyalty to his job vs. a chance at love, against the backdrop of fighting poverty through a G8 summit.  Compelling.

Next movies in the queue:
Love, Sex & Eating the Bones
Children of Heaven
Ma Vie en Rose
World's Fastest Indian
Future of Food

I finally ordered a dumpster!  This weekend we cleared out all the rotting wood from underneath the deck.  Never again will I buy a house without doing a final inspection before going to the close.  The previous owner left behind tons of crap that I neglected to do anything with until now, about 4 years later. 

After clearing under the deck, we moved on to the garage.  Unfortunately I can't put old paint cans, hazardous waste, or car tires into the dumpster ... I guess those have to go to the town dump?  I'm not sure.  I also cleared most of the stuff under the front steps.  We'll store the kids toys under a tarp out there until spring.  That will give us plenty of room to park our cars in the garage.

What a novel idea.

Maybe we'll get another dumpster in the spring for a second cleanup.

Two weeks ago, I saw several films at Connecticut's first annual Film Festival.  Warning:  Spoilers below.

The Things that Hang From Trees - about a boy in a small Florida town who doesn't have any real friends besides the town drunk.  A boy that he's "friends" with is really out of convenience, because the other boy is a bully.  There are lots of individual strands of stories ... subplots, I guess, which flesh out all the characters.  The boy wants to see fireworks from the lighthouse. 

His mom runs a lingerie store in town, and models garments in the window.  She flirts with a pharmacist in order to get some drugs, he seems to want to start a real relationship with her, offering to take her and her son to the fireworks.  She's also watched by a religious nut, who eats his lunch near at a bench near the window, he sweats and struggles to not grow excited looking at her, constantly muttering lines like "filthy whore".  Finally he loses control and goes to a room in his barbershop where he grips the toilet, maybe masturbates, and then slams his head against the wall in self-loathing.

There's the town drunk, who actually is level-headed, moral, and respectable (when he's not passed out).  He defends the boy from the bully.  There's the woman who runs the diner, talking to various townfolk.  There's the mom's ex-husband who was clearly not a good father, not a good man -- abusive and a deadbeat.  He's talked about a lot but only shows up near the end.  The movie ends with the boy seeing the fireworks from the lighthouse.  The next morning the mom is found dead in a tree, cause unknown.  Possibly killed by the religious nut or the deadbeat father.

This showing was particularly cool because afterwards, the director showed up for Q&A. 

The Big, Bad Swim - This was about a group of adults taking a swimming class together.  They had a variety of fears of being in the water, and I liked how the individual character had unique lives outside of class.  The film was really a drama with a backdrop of a swimming class.  The writer was available afterwards for Q&A, and afterwards I praised the film on how well it portrayed the various fears ... I could speak to this as a recent swimmer.

Jumping off Bridges - this was a somewhat depressing story about a group of high school friends who jumped off bridges for fun.  The main character's mom is really depressed, and has been for the past 8 or 9 years, because her daughter died at 5 years old.  Things get worse when his mom commits suicide and his dad and brother, after mourning, seem to return to life as usual.  His best friend all of a sudden gets busy with schoolwork, avoiding his phone calls.  We later find out that when he and his best friend were 7, there were kicking a soccer ball and were being bothered by his sister.  So he kicked the ball into the street and told her to go get it.  She did, and then was killed in the car accident.  So now he blamed himself for his mom's depression and suicide.  Disappointingly, there was no Q&A afterwards.

Hand of God - this was a documentary about the filmmaker's brother, who was abused by a catholic priest.  It was part historical, and part who the man is today and what struggles he faced throughout his life that may be attributed to the abuse received as a child.  The filmmaker was available for Q&A afterwards.  Creating the film was therapeutic for the brother.

Shorts II - this was a generally weird collection of short movies that while production ready, were really well, too short to get inolved with the characters.  One was a cartoon about Fumi and her bad luck foot -- dark humor as anything bad that happened in the vicinity happened to her foot.  She decided to use this to help people by extending her foot to protect the innocent.  Another one was documentary-like, about a woman who found a grasshopper in her collard greens.  Another one was about a man having nightmares from his vietnam experience (no dialog).  Another was a trippy collection of animation and ideas, which seemed a bit incoherent. 

Another was about a guy who tried dialing a suicide hotline, but instead got someone's home phone number.  They ended up talking and both feeling better about life, afterwards.  The directory of the last was there for Q&A.  An audience member mentioned how the film didn't show the suicidal man with any means of suicide, like a gun on the table.  I almost spoke up and said that maybe he had suicidal ideation, or just was feeling depressed.  Instead someone else said that it's left to the viewer to interpret from their own perspective what led the man to call the hotline.  I'm glad I didn't say anything, cuz that sounded accurate to me.