I'm back in Westhaven, after driving through the guts of a cloud. It was a hung-over drive, thoughts wandering to and fro; a good meditation. The Smith River was positively three-dimensional in its rush, the ocean muddy with washed-down silt. iPod lost its batteries and I explored the radio, learning that "New Rock" is apparently mostly stuff from when I was a teenager.

So I'll be taking an easy week, some work but not too much, and maybe some trips to the gym. I think it's probably time to initiate the post-holiday physiological turn-around, and getting my body taut once more will be good for my mind too. "Looking good, Feeling good," as Ricky's reminds us all.

Last years New Years resolutions -- "Less Work, More Sex, Flossing" -- could be retreaded, though in truth I think the whole resolution thing is bogus. There's always stuff to work on. The dream you live begins today.

I'll be doing a little overhaul on the old website too -- I got myself a fancy phone, so will be noodling with all things mobile -- so it might go offline for a bit or the like. Exciting!

I'm back in Eugene, at the house of my youth w/the moms. Was a good thing to unplug for a couple of days and let the 100 or so emails just pile up. Everybody wants a piece of me.

It appears that among my peers, text messaging has hit a tipping point. Holiday greetings all around.

My self-improvement plan of "letting myself get really bored" is paying off so far. I have to get back to work for a bit here -- true vacation will have to wait, again -- but I felt like I made some personal progress in the last couple days, re-reading and then writing several new entries in my offline paper journal.

So, I'm getting organized for the time being. Not sure yet what my partyplans might be for New Years, etc, but I'll make some calls today.

Hope you and yours are having a very merry Boxing Day:

Boxing Day dates back to past centuries when it was the custom for the wealthy to give gifts to employees or to people in a lower social class, most especially to household servants and other service personnel. The name has numerous folk etymologies.

As with Christmas itself, some elements of Boxing Day are also likely related to, and ultimately derived from, the ancient Roman Saturnalia, which also had elements of gift giving and social role reversal.

So tip well, etc.

I've never been much of a scenester. As a younger man I hung around with a pretty punk rock crowd, and later I lived within spitting distance during the great metastasis of hipsterdom in Brooklyn, but as often as I've stylistically appropriated elements of those (and other) cultures, I've never really felt like calling any of them home.

I wonder about this for a few reasons. I've been considering my relative lack of a peer group anywhere in California. LGD and the Redman are moving on up/out, to Portland and South America and various new forms of domesticity beyond. I say more power to them, and in a lot of ways it's possible that having them on hand as my crew was a contributing factor to my late psychosocial cocooning. Nothing like your old friends to make you feel comfortable. But the takeaway is that with them on the go, I'm going to have to find some new ways to spend my time.

Another prompt for this thinking is that the bounty of Facebook has been visited upon me in spades this season. In the past month it seems like there's a been a surge there outside the nerdy/poitico factions who heretofore were in the majority of my connects. I've discovered/been-discovered by old lovers, highschool and college crushes, and most interestingly a whole slew of my old fellow-artisans from the Experimental Theater Wing.

For, you see, this brings me to reminisce about those heady old days in 721 Broadway. Studio. It was a shining time; young and firey and flexible I was, making art pretty much all the time. Granted, ETW could itself be something of "a scene" -- though in keeping w/the above I shied away from that for the most part -- but it was also a real community, and the friendships that remained after college formed a foundation for, I think, the most positively connected phase of my life to-date.

It's getting to the point where one begins naturally, maybe inevitably, considering the year in review. Comparing, contrasting, looking ahead to what new things may come.

The new year is going to be different. For the past two and a half years I've been existing in a kind of insulated social world, living with old friends from High School and investing most of my energy in this business that I started.

The habits that I've developed as a result are going to have to change. Staying home on a saturday night to do the dishes, make a fire, drink some wine and watch TV... probably less likely to be in heavy rotation.

And that's probably a good thing. My life can be overly comfortable, and it's real easy to slip into a rut -- having external events force a bit of improvisation and self-definition may be just what's needed.

Like most people, I'm still figuring out what I want to be when I grow up. Sometimes I feel like I've got a good idea. Other times a little exigent circumstance is welcome.

Ultimately, my ambitions will drive me out into the universe one way or another. Too much wound up inside to ever really be satisfied in any one place or with any one thing. Feeling my way through to the new thing should be fun. There's a big beautiful world out there.