The Year in Utter Lack of Review

[tahnan]

I love New Year's; not the holiday per se, but I've always been a voracious consumer of end-of-year lists. When I listened to popular music (i.e., the early-to-mid '80s), I hung on every note of the Casey Kasem year-end countdown. I'd await the announcement of Time's Man/Woman/Planet/Machine of the Year with bated breath. I love reading lists of the ten best movies, TV moments, underdog sports stories, albums I've never heard of...it never mattered, really. Taking stock: I've always adored it.

But not this year. I've read a few things here and there, but found myself bored, for instance, with Phillip Niemeyer's "piece of fluff" (to use Arnold Zwicky's term). I haven't sought out anyone's list of anything. I, basically, don't care.

Part of that, I think, is that often around this time I'm at my parents' house (or, similarly, my in-laws'), with little to do but pick up the year-end issue of Time and flip through it, or poke around the web looking at this and that. I mean, I'm still poking around the web, but still.

But that's ultimately only part of it. I think that most of it is that this has been the worst year of the decade for me, and I've got to be honest, it hasn't been that great a decade. (I mean, married, yes; PhD, yes; cats, yes; but all in all.) It's hard for me to name anything good at all that's happened this year, and the few good things that did occur seemed to go sour in one way or another, like my one-semester job this past semester, or the new "socialist" president who I feel has utterly failed to live up to my unrealistic hopes that he might be at least half as progressive as his campaign promised. It's to the point that I find myself dismissing someone else's list of great things from the decade (and sniping in the livejournal of an innocent bystander; sorry about that) because I just can't really see anything good in most of it. (Oh, gee, great, High Definition TVs and iPods. Tell you what, mister: buy me one, and I'll appreciate it as an accomplishment of the decade.)

So unlike people who can say things like "I don't want this year to end" in their year-end summaries—and I'm happy for them, I really am, or at least as happy as I can manage these days—I can't say that at all. I want this year to end. I want this year to end, to the point that I don't even want to write a year-end summary. I don't want to think about the past year. I just want it the hell over with.

Comments

[ericberlin.livejournal.com]

Gah. Well, I, for one, sincerely hope you have a much happier 2010.

[jydog1.livejournal.com]

You escaped Philadelphia. That has to count for something.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

A little, yes. Though on the whole, I'd rather be employed in Philadelphia.

[jydog1.livejournal.com]

::tipping hat::

Well played, sir, well played.

[in-parentheses.livejournal.com]

I wasn't an innocent bystander. I started the conversation because I wanted people to fight on my LJ; duh!

Also, shouldn't that be "baited breath"? *ducks*

(Seriously, I'm sorry your year blew. That is the beauty of New Year's -- an artificial fresh start.)

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

OK, not entirely innocent. Still, I think both he and I walked away from that conversation thinking, "What a jackass."

And no, it's only "baited breath" if I've been eating worms, which, admittedly, is pretty much metaphorically accurate.

[lilisonna.livejournal.com]

Crickets should count.

[jydog1.livejournal.com]

I know your wife likes you and all, but I bet this would make her like you more: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=37547868

Don't say I'm not looking out for you.

[aatish2.livejournal.com]

And soon it shall be the hell-over-with! I have had a year I cannot at all complain about but I don't understand why anyone wouldn't want the year to end. New years are like the next chapter of a book that is deeply intriguing. No matter what the previous chapter is like, I'm always curious about what will come next in the narrative.

I hope this next year is better for you. C. and I and many of your friends will try very hard to help it be so. You are an excellent pedagog and an intellectual - I have faith that you will find the appreciation for those that you are richly overdue.

Good luck with 2010 my friend!

[(Anonymous)]

Hang in there, Lance! Another hour or so, and you get a clean slate. I hope the new year brings you better things.

--Norvin

p.s.--hey, you got into NELS! That was an achievement (or an accomplishment? definitely not an activity), and it can't have done your CV any harm.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Yes...though it's one of those things that I fear was a good-thing-gone-bad; I don't think my talk was as good as it should have been, nor was my appreciation of other people's, because I was so exhausted from my teaching schedule. Alas.

[(Anonymous)]

I read this comic and thought of you:
http://www.buzzle.com/showImage.asp?image=64023

(I know it seem shady that an anonymous poster is feeding you some random link, but I just like being anonymous when it comes to blogs. Nothing personal.)

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Er--thanks, anonymous! (Don't forget you can always email me, unless you mean you don't actually want me to know that you're reading it, as opposed to letting the world in general know.)

[elainetyger.livejournal.com]

I don't usually like even to be asked "how was your day?" let alone "how was your year?" because even an hour is made up of so many individual moments and experiences and thoughts and emotions that I feel as though I am doing a disservice to all of them to lump them under one label... and that label is usually based on the emotions in the moment when one is answering the question.

It sounds like you were not having a great moment when you wrote this. I hope you get a preponderance of better ones in the year to come.