And here we go with a brand new year, one more in a series in a brand new century. I'm still hung up on memories of years gone by, in the old century, still trying to figure out how I got from there to here, all the while realizing that I know exactly how I got here, and looking backwards, trying to imagine different paths, I can't. Imagine different paths, that is.

I know if I had married my first true love, I would not have stayed. I needed to experence other loves, other lovers. I didn't know the search would always be for the one I left. But I had to leave to find that out. But it's all right.

I know I could never have been responsible enough to stick with a career in public relations. I would always have foolishly flaunted unpopular political ideas enough to be uncompromisingly unprofessional. I would always have been an abject failure at office politics, preferring to spend my breaks smoking and reading alone. I would have been equally abject at university politics. I can't imagine narrowing my vision enough to even pick a doctoral thesis subject, not to mention researching and writing the damned thing. I find out late in life that I am probably seriously ADD, and have no wish to medicate myself into anything substantially different.

I'm hoping to finish the novel I started 20 years ago, and if I finish that one, perhaps I can write something else, but at least I will have finished something longer than a few paragraphs. My New Year's resolution is to devote three hours a day to writing - or at least to dealing with writing (re-reading, re-writing, thinking, that sort of thing). I did quit smoking three years ago (was it 3 years?), so I know I can stick to at least one thing at a time. I just have to steel myself to working in a dirty kitchen, knowing the back room is still a mess and the Christmas tree is still up. If I wait until all the work is done, it never will be.