NP: party shuffle

One thing that already hasn't changed here in 2006 is how my internal radio alarm clock works. 8:30 rolled around this morning and, for no real apparent reason, "Breakfast In America" from Supertramp lodged itself firmly in my brain. You have no idea how impossible it is to get back to sleep when that happens, and I'm still amazed at that particular circuitry in my head. The upside is that I'm totally going to learn that song for Vaughan's.

If you got my celebratory -- and somewhat drunken, let's be honest -- text message shortly after midnight last night (this morning?), it wasn't exactly laudatory. I believe the phrase that pays was "2005, don't let the door hit you on the way out!" And I sent it to more people than maybe I should have.

It's not that it's been a particularly bad year. There just seemed to be some trends that I found disappointing. I don't feel like I have much of anything to show for 2005. It feels like nothing really happened. Of course, careful study proves that not to really be the case. I paid off the credit cards I used to finance the "lean years." My legend continues to grow in San Diego after the toast I gave at my brother's wedding. I gigged more than I rehearsed. And I got a big TV.

Then again, I also got my car broken into and lost a couple thousand dollars worth of drum equipment towards the end of the year. I claimed at the time that I didn't feel particlarly violated by that, but maybe I did. Or maybe I'm just upset that I was, to push the metaphor, asking for it, or that my insurance didn't cover as much of the loss as I had expected.

The other thing that's been bugging me lately is that I don't feel like I'm a part of things. I'm pretty emphatically not a part of Barnburners or Section 8 anymore. And I've been struggling with fitting in at work, both from a work and a non-work perspective, for some time now. I'm not sure if it's some kind of internal struggle between selfishness (epitomized, of course, by the TV) and selflessness (being part of something bigger than yourself), or just simple need for external validation from various peer groups, or what. It's just unsettling.

Which, of course, leads to the road forward. I had been starting to tell people that my resolution was to talk less and listen more, present forum notwithstanding. The point being, I still have this tendency -- primarily among people I don't know well, which is why some friends looked at me with some degree of disbelief when I brought it up -- to volunteer too much information, to try way too hard to make somebody like me, or to be funny, and whether or not it seems desperate to the other person, it feels that way to me. Treating people as audiences instead of people is the description that's crystalizing in my still somewhat fuzzy head. So I need to stop, or at least rethink how I try to connect with people, because I don't think it's all that effective. Or if I'm going to insist on treating people as audiences, I should start doing stand-up, which brings us back to that wedding toast. Or I should start a blog. Waitaminute...

As is usually the case, I went big picture from that. 2006 is going to be about breaking bad habits, from late-night pizza after gigs to all that stuff I just expounded on in excruciating detail. If I'm feeling particularly bold, it might be about starting good habits. And I might try breathing new life into the book project, because I have a notion of what the book after the Internet music one will be. The new solo record isn't a resolution, per se, just something I should do on principle.

I should also resolve to avoid self-serving, navel-gazing posts like this one, now that I think about it. Thanks for your indulgence and your attention, which generally goes without saying, but probably shouldn't.