Still… what choice do we have with these year-end reviews? As one of those Greeks said, a life unreflected is a life unlived. If we plough forward (as Nike would have us do) through our lives giving little consideration to the choices we’ve made or make, giving little consideration to the past, then we are not learning, we are not living. Reflection allows us that moment to stop and take account, a sort of pit stop where we can see where we are and re-tool what we think needs fixing. I dunno bout you, but I find that the days often just smash together at such a frenzied pace that I just get overwhelmed by the moment… I get so lost in a series of disconnected moments that I fail to see the larger picture… I fail to see these moments connect. As such, I lose perspective. I see only the individual moments… and they never seem to add up to anything… they just freely float separate from life.

If I have a bad day of writing or get a story rejected… I too often just want to give up, just think I’m a failure… (my Latvian animator chum just e-mailed me this morning – Dec. 16 — about the same problem. She works very hard every day and as such has lost sight of the end… is just so lost in these daily processes that she’s forgotten WHY she’s doing what she’s doing.) Of course it’s an illusion, it’s my perspective… or lack thereof that causes this. Carving out a career/hobby… whatever… as a writer doesn’t help. It’s a lonely silly addiction not even worthy of my dog. Sometimes you spend days punched out by doubt, fear, apathy and failure. Other days you bask in delusions of success, confidence and certainty.

You wish you could just toss it aside and get a “normal” job (which I have six months of the year)… but you know it ain’t gonna happen because, 1. you’ll get fired in a week and 2. you NEED to write, think, articulate the mess that surrounds you on a daily basis. It’s not a matter of privilege or laziness. It’s a matter of need… a chemical imbalance perhaps. I guess it’s a matter of perspective again. Writers/artists have unstructured, messy lives… art is a way of structuring those moments. It’s not all that different than a 9 to 5 job really. We try to find structure and need that sort of regiment to order their lives (of course… we all know that most of us/them then fuck around unstructured within that structure). It’s like that Mr. Show sketch about how a dysfunctional background tends to create more umm… artistically inclined folks. If you’ve come from function… that means you’ve had structure and order and calm… you like it… you know it… you follow it. You come from dysfunction… you know chaos, alienation, lack social basics etc… and don’t fit into those umm… “normal” compartments… although as we increasingly see… normal itself is a relative thing (check out Foucault’s Madness and Civilization or hey… check out Philip Dick’s Martian Time Slip or the recent Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester). I hate to quote Popeye, cause there’s this laissez-faire attitude he has that stinks, but there is some fundamental philosophical truth in, “I yam what I yam.”

In theory, the idea of year-end resolutions ain’t such a bad thing; it means you’ve been reflecting on who you are… and that you have a desire to break free from Popeye’s shrug. But we really seem to think that we can just erase the past and start from scratch. That’s not only a fallacy, but it’s a belief that puts unrealistic pressures on you. You’re not a floppy disk. You cannot just reformat come January 1st. If you come to realize that, you’ll make things a hell of a lot easier. All those damn promises. You don’t just up and stop drinking January 1 or diet or quit smoking. You need a plan mon chums, a system, a structure. That’s the irony of this seemingly highly structured and compartmentalized end of year stuff… they’re actually totally unstructured. No one plans it out. It’s stuck in this click of the heels, if I say it it’ll come true fairy tale. Soundbites.

Historical amnesia remains one of the most prevalent illnesses of our time. We constantly seem to feel that we can change the future by erasing the past, when in fact we must read, acknowledge and understand the past if we have any hope up resolving the present and future. Animation isn’t going to die or thrive come January 1st. It doesn’t work like that… animation is where it is and isn’t because of thousands upon thousands of decisions made in scattered moments in different times and spaces.

(For a nifty visual translation of what I’m saying, check out Mati Kutt’s film, Underground which is all about order/disorder and how they inform one another… or what was that Belgian student film, Antipode?)

So we need a bit more balance between the moments/means and the end. We need to value those moments more and yet not get so caught up in them that we lose sight of the larger picture. Bigger problem is our fixation on the end over the means. Year in reviews are like highlight packages… they focus on the goal, not the work that lead to the goal. The result is all the matters, not the process. Creates the illusion that goals are easily attained. So if I look back on my year… I’d say… OK… June 2, 2003 — first book is published. That’s it, that’s all. But what about all those small, seemingly mundane and irrelevant moments from March 1996 (let’s say) to December 2003 that led up to that June 2nd achievement? What about those seemingly endless hours spent alone in a god damn cold basement often staring blankly at the screen or watching Seinfeld? They all contributed to the end result, didn’t they? They’re all part of the package, ain’t they? And that’s just moments DIRECTLY related to the end. That doesn’t include all those earlier years… filled with seemingly inconsequential moments that in fact contributed to that June 2 ‘end.’