Another year is nearing its close. The curtains are about to come down and I, both audience member and player on the stage, am unsure of what this performance just was. I have been reading over my diary entries from the past year, as has now become a ritual thing for me to do on the last day of the year, and have been realizing that a lot went on this year, a lot I have forgotten about, and also a lot of the same, a lot of things never done.

I quit my copy editing job in the beginning of the year and had a few short-term jobs scattered throughout this year, the BN.com job, being a giant chicken in a store window, being a nutcracker in a store window, that solitary day as a masseur, and the occasional sex work job. Because of this, because I spent so little of the year actually working, it would have seemed that that time freed up would have been put to use writing, but so little of it was, probably less so than when I was steadily employed. The year started with a story of mine being published in Userlands, something that I told myself was going to be a catalyst for me to be more productive, write more stories and submit them to places, but served as no such thing. Obviously this is something that I plan on correcting in this coming year.

I moved out of the apartment I had lived in for four years, moved out of Williamsburg, moved to Bushwick. The move was probably a mistake and is something that I find myself regreting when I am hanging out in Williamsburg, thinking of how I used to live a couple blocks from this bar, or how I used to walk underneath the BQE and it feeling comfortable, a sign of home, whereas now walking under it provokes memories of that past feeling, reminds me that this is no longer my neighborhood. But living here has presented new joys in both a new neighborhood and also in living with Niki, who, aside from occasionally making me crazy in a bad way, makes me really happy with her energy and craziness. My other roommates, the bedbugs, do not make this a pleasant place to live though, and will sometimes inspire the fantasy of burning everything I own and running away.

I had nice trips to Florida, to Chicago, and to San Francisco this year that provided me with joy of a certain kind that seems to only come from excursions away from New York, and which, thinking back on them, make me want to take more little trips, visit more people, look at my life here from a distance that perhaps only a physical distance can provide.

It was in March that I had anal sex for the first time and that opened the gates to what has since been sexual adventure and sexual hunger, heightened forms of the things that I had yet to experience. There were brief things with numerous boys I had forgotten about until rereading over these entries, recalling fondly my experiences with most of these boys. There was that interaction and time spent with the writer, which started out so great and ended in a big ball of terribleness, me running away from his condo and taking a bus to a friend's house in Miami. Thinking back over these boys, I still have warm feelings toward most of them, but it seems to be reflexive, memories of that original warm feeling and not the actual feelings. I am so fascinated by the heart, by human beings, this seeking out of something in others, and the ability to find hints of it in romantic and physical affection. There is something magical about the whole process. There was also some major heartache toward the end of this year about a specific person and specific incidents.

This is becoming boring, the recounting of things already recounted, which may have been boring in that first recounting. So much of I did this and I did that, and la de da, because we all do these things and we all did those things, and the purpose in this is not to say what we did (unless of course we say that very well, which currently I am not doing), but to get at why we did it, why we do any of the things we do, the reasons why these I dids are the I dids they are.

I had a lovely time this year, did lovely things, had nice moments with friends that I think of fondly, but there are also so many things I did not do. I am becoming aware of the reasons for that, have been thinking about them ever since I went home for Christmas, and am going to try to remedy them. I am going to be more productive in every sense of the word. There are never moments when I forget that I am alive; there are however many moments, most moments actually, when I am not as cognizant of what that actually means, the implications, the scariness, and the beauty of that, as well as the duties and obligations incumbent upon someone aware of those things.

Another new year is here, will be very shortly, and there are only so many times that I will be able to say that. Goodbye 2007. Best we go our separate ways.