This Time, Last Year

Last New Year’s Eve, I spent some time counting my blessings over a big pot of gumbo and an Angel marathon, and then spent the first day of 2004 recovering from the MLA and articulating my hopes for the new year. (Well, before watching my beloved Tigers kick some Sooner butt, that is.) Those hopes were general but clear:

To get R. home, and keep him here a while.

To find a publisher, and put the old project to bed.

To find some clarity on the new project.

To make a dent in the growing masses of unread books I’ve accumulated.

Most of all, to find myself, this time next year, in a world substantively more peaceful, and in a country substantively more compassionate, than the one I find myself in today.

I did fairly well on most of those: R. spent the vast majority of 2004 with me; it’s beginning to look as though that publisher issue is going to resolve in fairly short order (though I will say no more in an effort not to completely jinx the thing); I know where I’m going next. Alas, though, the last two did not quite work out as I’d hoped — but they give me a good starting place for 2005.

I’m a little too rattled from last night’s festivities (darned R. and his fancy French champagne) to be terribly reflective about my hope for the year ahead, as yet. Perhaps later this evening, once my head clears. For the moment, a happy new year and my best wishes to all.