Looking Back and Ahead

I've never been one to get all gushy about the passing of a year, and then go overboard with "resolutions" that get followed for a week and then discarded, but an end-year retrospective and look forward has been something I've done recently.  This year's retrospective is my most formal, largely because of the journal.  This journal, even though it's not quite one year old, has served to provide me better documentation of events in my life, as well as a better critical documentation of given events on a daily basis.  I've never been as diligent about keeping a journal as with this online version.  Today I look back and really see the value.

2000 was a good year in terms of people.  Callie and I grew reacquainted at the end of 1999, and I've not spent a night away from her (other than two trips out of country) since New Year's Eve 1999, when she was released after a rather scary hospital trip.  We have grown into a strong committed relationship, and it keeps getting better.  It was also a good year for making good new friends, as I've met Hanah, Mr. Vaughn and Cathy, and Don in "real life" as well as Erzse and Jonelin "on the net."  I see lots of Hallmark at work daily, and I've seen Micah quite a bit, which has been a great improvement over that period of several years that he was away in the Peace Corps, and watched him get ready to be a full-blown family man.  I saw Kellas a fair amount early in the year (and housesat for him in south Wimbledon in January), but not at all during the latter half, which was unfortunate (although we do keep the email flying).  I've seen Camille a few times, and we've enjoyed some excellent music together.  I've "rediscovered" Andrew and Michael via the net, which has been good, and another old friend (Atlee) made contact at some point with some interesting news.  I've not seen much of Dave and Melissa, sadly, but I've watched an addition to their family from afar (email is a great thing).  Contact with some friends (Valerius, R, Mr. Hutchison, Meredith, Melusina, Laura, Melissa, Samantha) has grown sporadic over the past year, and that is regrettable.  I've not seen as much of my family as in years past, but I think it's safe to say that 2000 compared to 1999 was a fine year for my mom and dad; and I've been in much greater contact with my cousins and aunts via the net than ever before, which is good.  And finally, I added one very important "person" to my circle in 2000; Kiwi has become a highly valued member of the Kev family.

2000 was a good year for pursuit of my passions, although some might call them addictions.  Web "stuff" has been the biggest passion.  This site has undergone a massive redesign as well as the addition of a journal and weblog and other smaller changes.  It's become quite a creative and intellectual outlet for me, and something I value highly.  It also spawned a child in 8 More Miles (our Reckless Kelly fanpage), which started as a single page of audio clips on this site, grew into its own domain, and also got a major redesign despite being less than a year old.  I've learned a lot about web design working on these sites, and 8 More Miles has been a great collaborative project with Callie (proof, boys and girls, that Kev can play well with others, so long as "others" are competent).  Texas music has become more of a passion, and has also driven my interest in producing live "bootleg" music to its current obsessive level, which is kind of funny considering that in Fall 1999 I wasn't even sure Callie ought to record the Reckless Kelly Mucky Duck appearance.  In the last year, we've managed to capture three Counting Crows shows, two Joe Ely shows, one of the last Brent Mitchell Band shows, two Willis Alan Ramsey shows, and many RK shows; I still need to engineer (that sounds exciting, doesn't it?) the conversion of many of those minidiscs into mp3.  Backpacking took a bit of a hit relative to other pursuits, but I do still love to get out to the backcountry; it's just become less frequent because of other pursuits.  Books and ideas dominated the year, in relation to this website and to some of my new friends, although it seems that I never have enough time for intellectual pursuits.  My commitment to fitness has taken somewhat of a hit in 2000 compared to 1999, when I was a workout NAZI, but I've still managed to keep a fairly good "maintenance" routine.

Travel and politics dominated events important to me in 2000.  I made two trips to London and a trip to Calgary (my first), and those were rewarding.  There were also roadtrips to the Illinois River and Lake Texoma, not to mention a trip to Austin to see the Counting Crows and a trip to College Station to see Brent Mitchell.  I also rather enjoyed a business trip to Bartlesville/Tulsa that saw me shuttling one of my London bosses back and forth across Oklahoma.  All of these trips have proven to me that adventure is where you find it, be that overseas, across a land border, at a strange bar near an Illinois River float camp, or where you grew up.  Politics, of course, dominated the year, and I think my commentary on the Elian Gonzalez and Florida post-election affairs was some of the best writing I have done (in terms of integrating knowledge of American political and legal thought, political philosophy, and contemporary affairs).  And even though my election prediction was way off (I never wrote a planned essay explaining why that was the case, so I'll suffice it to say that I made a mistake that good political risk analysts don't make, and that was to become less objective than I should have been in assessing the news; while several in-state polls were showing what actually did happen, I watched the movements of both candidates and assumed they both had internal polling that showed something different, namely a comfortable Bush lead in important electoral states.  Determining reliable news sources and indicators is THE most important aspect of political predictions, and I blew it in that case), I am fairly pleased with the accuracy and depth of my analysis over the past year.

I should wrap up with a few comments on the dissertation and work.  The dissertation remains unfinished, although I've made progress in the last year.  It has obviously not been the highest priority in my life, and I've not been willing to let it be that.  But I'm still passionate about my thesis, and I think it's very important.  However, it's not the most important thing to me, intellectually or personally, as this review should illustrate, and I think that's rooted simply in the fact that the dissertation process is less about ideas and more about jumping through requisite academic hoops for a credential.  Eventually, I will finish jumping through those hoops simply because I've invested a fair amount of time and money in that credential.  But that credential won't make me a wiser political scientist or a better person; obviously, I believe the priorities I've described in the paragraphs above are more important in that regard, and this year I learned that I don't need to be apologetic to myself or anyone else about those priorities relative to finishing the dissertation.  Frankly, I think more people would be happy if they took my approach to these matters!  Which brings me to work.  Work remains a mixed bag.  I enjoy the work I do, and it's one of the few places where I could actually get paid to do what I would probably be doing anyway to some extent.  The downside is that I work for an organization in which idiots are rewarded, initiative is discouraged, and shoddy work is the norm.  It is a place that tries to suck the morale out of the competent while rewarding idiots.  I have come to grips with that and made my peace this year, although other work colleagues continue to struggle with it.  For the most part, the idiots stay out of my way, and I ignore them.  Getting paid (and getting benefits) to pursue a passion is something most people never experience; I've come to the conclusion it's whiny to get down about the corporate culture when the positives, in my objective assessment, outweigh the negatives.  Would I prefer to do what I'm doing in a place that actually rewards my efforts and talents (beyond simply letting me keep a job there)?  You betcha!  And if/when I find that place, then I'll have a decision to make.

* * * *

So that's the year in review.  I'm looking forward to 2001 as being even better.  I really would like to finish the dissertation, although I'm not going to kill myself to do it.  I need to read a lot more, as evidenced by the size of my Amazon.com wishlist.  I'm planning more travel, including another trip to London and a trip to Greece.  I'm already starting to think about the Memorial Day float trip/road trip.  I'm going to be more diligent about the gym and my diet than I have been in the past three months or so.  Live music will occupy a fair amount of my time.  I need to do more backpacking this spring than I did last year.  I'm planning some incremental additions to both websites in the latter half of the year.  And I plan to continue observing, analyzing, and writing about life.  In short, it's gonna be another hell of a ride.  

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