And so ends 2005. I remember so clearly the sense of anticipation and wonderment I felt in the first hours of this year – in so many ways things didn’t happen as I expected them to in those magical dawn hours. Still, not everything turned out for the worst. I don’t know if I moved very far or grew very much, but seeds were planted and maps were drawn up, and for the most part I enjoyed getting here.

Let’s see what sort of adventures await us, shall we?

I spent the day out, wandering the city. In the morning I meandered down to the Apple Store to see if I could get a replacement battery (woe, out of stock), and eventually made it down to MIT to have lunch with V and her co-workers. V suggested we see Casanova after work, which was a great idea, but it left me with 4 or so hours I hadn’t planned on filling. Between a lot of coffee, the 2005 Print Design Annual, my thick-soled shoes and the camera which I’d tossed into my bag at the last minute, I ended up having a great day.
V and I met up in the Common, and after a steaming bowl of pho, we saw the film. Casanova was a great farce in the old style, and is highly recommended.

I’m mostly on holiday this week, and am taking advantage of it by lounging around, reading, and working on projects I’ve been too busy to deal with. Stress levels are are very low, and I’m one relaxed cat.

In memewatch: if you haven’t seen “Lazy Sunday” you probably should, if only to make sense of the proliferating cupcake references in popular culture.

Also, The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny is worth a viewing; it’s very silly, and has much cartoon violence.

I’m wearing a new argyle sweater, gazing longingly at my new retro Darth Vader cookie jar. In my hand is a book, The Sayings of the Vikings, which contains hard, forged nuggets of motivational wisdom from the Uplands. Things like:

Never walk
away from home
ahead of your axe and sword.
You can’t feel a battle
in your bones
or foresee a fight.

I’d like to think that Darth Vader would approve, even in cookie-jar form.

A few years ago we were barely making ends meet, and we didn’t have enough money at the end of the month to buy Christmas dinner. We made do with an impromptu vegetarian chili and cornbread dinner, scrounged up with the last contents in the pantry. We took what we had, and made it into an amazing and comforting meal; it was perhaps the best Christmas meal I’ve had.*

Christmas means a lot of things to me; family, sharing, love. But this year, I think that the “promise and hope” note is sounding a little louder than the rest of the band, and that’s just right.

Tomorrow morning we’ll make some coffee, open the presents, and I’ll get started on our Christmas chili. To be inclusive, I hope that all of you have an emotionally appropriate festive season.

*Sadly, on a subsequent year, I mistakenly used Indian chili powder instead of Mexican chili powder, transmuting dinner into a super spicy cauldron of inedible Death Chili. At least the cornbread was good.

Chava’s christmas present arrived, and I was instructed to open it early. Reluctantly did I comply, and to my joy I found equipment for making tortillas and a long cast iron skillet. While it could be argued that I’ve grown up, I still like to play with new toys, so I set out for the Foodmaster and returned with all the requisite elements for fajitas. Fajitas are somewhere in the top three favorite foods, so a gift enabling me to turn raw ingredients into this form of magical yumminess is beyond thoughtful.

And so we cooked fajitas from scratch; including the tortillas, of course. They were just a tad thick, but I’m certain I’ll get better. The other part of the gift was a set of heirloom dried beans (don’t laugh)! from Rancho Gordo. Beans I’ve never even heard of, things like Tiger’s Eye beans. They were not included in tonight’s feast, but I can’t wait to cook and devour them.

The kitchen felt like Texas today.

I’m happily nestling into Christmas weekend. Today I did some seriously fun coding on a new incident tracking system, which is beginning to fit like a glove. The power of bespoke.

I’ve still been working on the vector portraits for an hour or two each day, though as things progress each takes longer and longer as I find better ways to get the effect I want.

What did I do this year? In a nutshell, I’ve started to make good on all the promises that I’ve had set out. There’s a lot of me that feels that I’ve been marking time for the past year, waiting for that magic moment when it all makes sense. Well, it’s not going to make sense, so I just waded in and did my best. Overall it’s been a success. Here are some of the highlights, in no particular order:

• I’ve managed to be a responsible adult, more or less, for the entire year. Bills paid on time, obligations met, duties dispatched with gusto. It can be argued that being an adult involves doing things that one doesn’t like now and then for the greater good, but there’s a great deal of satisfaction at the end of the day when things got done, and I had a hand in it.
• I put out a CD of electronic music. It’s not perfect, but I did it. I’ve got a follow-up EP ready to go to press, which I think is better music.
• On the “art music” side, I did a big multi-media piece, Langue. It stretched me a lot.
• I’ve expanded my skills as a visual artist, which have been languishing by the wayside for a very long time. I don’t think I’m good yet, but I am my mother’s child and I’m getting better. Digital photography has removed the “getting film developed” snag, so with the “hard work” bar lowered I press ahead.
• I’ve got my first paying gigs as a “freelance designer.” I’m being creative, and people are paying me for it. I can’t tell you how satisfying that is.
• I’ve met some really great friends, and enjoyed the company of the ones I already have. Though I’m a bit reclusive by nature, and I don’t easily make friends, I somehow managed to foster some great friendships over the year. I’m grateful for you all; life is so much more fun when you have people to share it with.
• I’m a lot more comfortable in my skin, on the whole. I’m still making friends with my body, but we’re on speaking terms, and we’re going to do a buddy movie together in 2006.

Solstice day! We’re at the darkest point, and things only get brighter from here.

I do a lot of head-wrassling, more than most people give me credit for. While there’s been a lot of musing on responsibility, this year’s headline cage match has been with authenticity. In the first half of the year I spent a lot of time with my very good friend Sue, and her obsession with authenticity rubbed off on me and has continued. It’s very meta, which suits me well as I am rather meta; most of the time there’s a version of me watching me. My scholar, my watcher, my conscious. When I’m biking downhill and feeling like Lance Armstrong, he’s the part of me who notices this.

He also acts like a shield, a buffer. Sometimes he stops me from doing stupid things (not always, sadly). The question is, is that authentic? Is my first response the only authentic one, or is it this tandem combination of impulse and temperament? If I’m not authentic, what am I? How can I be truly authentic, and what does that buy me? Me and myself, fighting to the pain in a cage match. It runs like a whirlwind in my head, and most of the time I feel like Schroedinger’s ethicist, at once authentic and inauthentic. Can I be inauthentic, even if I think I am? Is it possible that I really don’t know what I think?

It’s deep and prickly, yet I’ve uncovered some things, and I can even articulate a few of them. So I’m pleased to announce that Authenticity joins Selfishness as the main Jeffrey “issues” for the foreseeable future. We’ve all got issues, so I’m told, and as mine are more about intent than the actions themselves, I’ll cuddle mine to my chest on a warm winter night, selfishly and authentically.

Getting better!

This weekend I spent a lot of time doing vector art portraits for people I don’t know. It’s great for me as I get practice using Illustrator, and I am able to give people things that they like. A win-win, as they say. On a deeper level, It’s empowering to me to be able to be creative visually.

I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable since I started doing this on Friday with Chuck Norris. I’ve included a montage with details of some of the images so you can get an idea of what I’ve been up to. The way I seem to make them, a method I’ve kind of figured out through trial and error produces a highly stylized, expressive portrait. Part of the fun for me is finding just the right things in every person to bring out.

Technically, I’m enjoying learning through experience how light shapes faces. There’s a metaphor there somewhere, to be sure.

One of the things that has simultaneously delighted and frustrated me about Terry Pratchett is that he doesn’t use chapters. It’s brilliant because I always want to keep reading; he avoids the typical end-of-chapter situations, which make the narrative careen more than drive. On the same point, there’s never a good point to put it down. There’s a solace in the punctuation at the end of a chapter. More is coming, assuredly, but now we can rest and catch our breath.

I suppose I’m a Narrativist at heart, as I see life as a big story. I have a particular telling of my past that I enjoy more than any other possible tellings, and as I get older, I get better and better at telling it; pulling out the elements which support, conveniently suppressing the others. But there are other versions of my life, and to get something approaching truth one has to read every last one of them and then make up your own mind.

If life is approached as a story, then the end of the year is a chapter ending of sorts. Arbitrary after a fashion, but inevitable. There’s a strange, stirring power in numbers changing; when the odometer reaches your birthday or slides from 9999 to 10,000, there’s a sense of what? pride, accomplishment, something soothing. An illusion, but a comforting one. And we’re at the turn. 2005 is crashing to its conclusion and the summaries and abstracts begin pouring in; we condense the experiences of the year into bullet points so we can push things aside and get started on the next chapter.

I don’t know what to make of this year. If I look at it one way, it’s been one of the best years so far; another way, not so good. I’ve done some great things, and other times hated myself. But any way I slice it, it’s been a good story.

In a way, this rambling post is a stand-in for the things I’m not going to talk about it as I attempt to make sense of 2005 in the next week or two. I’m writing the bad experiences of the year into an entirely different book; they are not forgotten – I don’t think I can forget. Here, now, I will focus on the good things, because these are the things that will form the threads of next year’s story. I don’t know if I ultimately control my own fate, but what I can control, if anything, is how I look at my life.

I’ve been working on my Illustrator skills, bending bezier curves to my will, as it were. Here’ s portrait of Chuck Norris doing what he does best. If you find yourself in front of Chuck Norris, and he is in this position, I hope your will has been written.

Work is presently crushing my soul. That is all.