What a bad year 2005 was.
It started out so well, as it always does for those of us who are in denial.
In the intervening months since my last entry here in September, I have more or less adapted to being alone. I have not yet found fulltime work, but I am still teaching and gigging with my band. Freelance work has dried up. I have had none for the past month. I am working part time in a winery, and part time helping a painting contractor friend of mine. My Social Security statement arrived last week, and revealed that I made $17,000 in 2004. I don't think I did even that well in 2005.
Life is what happens while you are making other plans, as John Lennon said. My life has been reduced to survival as my (unpaid) bills pile up. Yet I remain creative. I've built two or three pretty good web sites in the past few months. I completed a new short story on January 1st, 2006. (And can you believe that the first half of the first decade of the 21st century has passed? And that John Lennon has been dead for 25 years?) Simply astonishing.
I guess the main thing I am saying here is that this journal is going on hiatus for a while. I've already cut my old website into pieces, as some may have noticed. There is no clear link to this journal from anywhere in alsirois.com right now aside from the Not-A-Webring page, and any visitors from there will see this (final?) entry. My main site has been repurposed to attract professional business. So far it isn't doing very well. But I remain optimistic.
2006 can't be much worse than 2005 was. It can't. Can it?
All of you reading this, be well. Be honest. Be of good faith. Be of good cheer.