Year end

End of year reflections: 2006 was the year that I temporarily put aside the plan for early retirement, ocean life, full-time parenting, organic farming, winemaking and all those generally sensible things in exchange for urban life, a fully engaged career (for the first time in about 16 years), a second (paying) career as an agented author (with what about 20 editors have predicted will be a languishing mid-lister, but fuck 'em I say, it's fun anyway), a very nicely classic case of irritable bowel syndrome (no coincidence there I'm sure) . We've just been told that another gigantic ice shelf has collapsed -- the size of 11,000 football fields. I'm negotiating with my dean about the location of my virtual office in a massively multi-user virtual space. My ex-wife is carrying her fifth child, which means that some of my children will have 10 siblings. While on sabbatical last year, I lost enough pounds to be lighter than I've been in 25 years. Since returning to work, I've gained back 1/80th of a ton. At some point last year, I seriously considered training for the New York Marathon. Now, I haven't run for 16 weeks, my longest layoff in 4 years, have lost all my base, and become winded running up more than 2 flights of stairs.

So what's on tap for me next year? I will enter my fiftieth year of life. My youngest child will turn 3. My oldest child will no longer be a teenager. I will ask someone to sever my vas deferens. Both of them. With extreme prejudice. We've had the discussion many times. We are SO done! I will deliver a book manuscript to a publisher, and then new levels of madness will ensue. I will meet with an architect to discuss a virtual building for a research centre that I'm directing (until somebody discovers that I don't know anything). Somebody will notice that I no longer really do the kind of research for which I'm funded, and there may well be some flack over that. I will lose back those 25 pounds somehow.

Resolutions? Find a way to renew my faith in the abundance of the human spirit. Trust those I love to do the right thing with no helpful advice from me. Learn to enjoy relinquishing control.