Oooo. This is the year that just keeps on giving. It's been a banner year here at the ol' Chase residence. Oh, yes. Let's look back on it, shall we? On second thought, let's not. At various points on this blog, I've already recounted a good 25% of all the horrific shit that went down this year so there's no need to relive it.

Nonetheless, 2004 just keeps rolling on with all its wonder, and I've been thinking a lot about it lately. It's not that nothing good happened to me this year--a lot of great things happened, in fact, mainly having to do with the people around me and how great they are--but 2004 ate, there's no doubt about that.

I have written several times about how in the mid-late 1990s, I was a very unhappy person. My plans to actually use my major had fallen through (this is a story of its own, one I'll tell some time) and I was poor and underemployed. I felt like I was in a holding pattern, frozen there not knowing what to do. Back then, my "workdays" would usually last anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours. The rest of my time I'd spend reading, listening to music and fretting. Oh, and doing housework. I'd prepare two healthy homecooked meals every day, and the apartment was always immaculate. The books I read were always very thick and very difficult. And almost every day, I'd listen to Jerree Small's Sleeping Giant album, not that I even knew who Jerree Small was, only that she was originally from Duluth but didn't live here anymore.

Recently, I was laying on a chaise (ironically, the kind of couch you see in psychiatrists' offices, at least in the comics) in a room lit by only one candle. A few feet away, Jerree practiced for an upcoming show. I didn't say much; I just laid there listening and enjoying the music. Every now and then, I'd make an unorthodox request, not for a title, but for a subject. I'd ask if she would play a song about ice cream, for example. "Well, none of my songs are about ice cream," she'd say, "but I have this song that mentions..." And so on.

"Could you play a song about a foreign country?" I asked. It had been years since I had listened to Sleeping Giant, so I had completely forgotten about the song "Romania." As soon as I heard it, I was instantly transported back to that unhappy time, and the difference between my life in 1998 and 2004 was practically enough to unravel my mind. It's unbelievable to me how different my thinking about the world was back then, and how it worked to my detriment. If I had those fears and concerns now, I wouldn't be able to get out of bed.

...I am trying to forget where I'm from
But all around me are familiar sounds...

The oddest part is how now that I have been facing real issues as opposed to mid-20s life-crisis bullshit, I seem to have summoned a reserve strength that I didn't know I had. My two concerns now as I watch the sun set on this year are 1) whether or not this year has still more in store for me and mine, and 2) whether it is truly the curse of 2004, or if this year is just the warmup for 2005.

I guess we'll see, won't we? And I guess I'll most likely tell you all about it. Now that my computer is back up and running.

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