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the year in review not really

What is there to say about 2012? I almost don't know. This might be a function of age – as you grow older, time seems to undergo a certain kind of flattening, with distinctions of recent history getting compressed, and losing all their colour-coding. Every so often C will ask me how long we've been together now, and instead of being offended (another product of age -- lack of outrage) I simply take it as the vanishing of her near history (or maybe she wishes it would vanish). As for myself, I can tell you a lot more about specific episodes (last month of university, first summer working at a mental hospital, the year I moved to Kingston, the months before and after Oona was born, etcetera, etcetera) than I can tell you about this last year.

The only sense I do come away with is that I spent a great deal more time thinking about course correction, which is a technical way of describing the ability to turn with circumstances (or at least trying to). When I was younger I used to think, Okay, today's the day, we're going to act like this, and then everything will fall into place. And of course I would fail in spectacular fashion. Now my thoughts run more along the lines of, Okay, that didn't work, we'll let that go, and try to sort this other thing out instead, and you don't need to mention x to y, and that other thing is royally fucked, so ignore that, it didn't matter anyway, and for Christ's sake do something about that other thing, and see where you're at tomorrow. And there's a strangeness to all this, in that you start taking less and less of it very seriously, while at the same time knowing full well that you're just one crisis and maybe two or three paycheques away from disaster. But still: forward. Keep trying. Most of us don't really know what we're doing anyway, and are not in control of our lives, and have little or no understanding of what fires the very thoughts in our head. And then what? But still: forward.

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