Happy New Year! #3

Have you ever written 101 goals, or 101 good things, or 101 something or other?

I wrote 101 goals when I was about 13/14. I remember reaching around 30 comfortably, but then I started flailing after that, repeating many goals I had mentioned previously and so on. If you have the time or if you're just bored, I would really recommend you write one.

A friend asked me to write one at that age, and at the time, I was pretty confused. Heck, afterwards, I asked what the purpose of it all was, what would happen next... I can't recall the answer, but I don't think I received one that I was satisfied with, anyway. Perhaps there was a reason for that. It's something to think about, isn't it?

So yeah, write those 101 goals, keep them safe. Have a look back when a decade has passed. It'll be interesting.

I talked about that because it's like statistics, in a way.

2009:

57 deviations
32,000 comments
3,150 forum posts
1,500 favourites.

2010:

90 deviations
Over 87,500 comments
Over 37,500 forum posts
172 favourites

2011:

115 deviations
Over 131,000 comments
Over 133,000 forum posts
284 favourites

One can be presented with something like goals, or statistics, and wonder what has happened during those years. It's pretty obvious here that I've spent increasing amounts of time in the forums... and I have. I've moved away from the community as a whole and focused on just one aspect of dA.

I fear that in 2012, I won't be here much at all. Already, I can feel myself becoming more and more jaded, less and less caring. I don't comment on deviations as much, and I've gotten a bit tired of the forums too. My deviation uploads are decreasing... so after all that, what does it leave?

I've watched a lot of people come and go, and I can't help relating that to trains and how we pass train after train, where all of these carriages hold people with their lives, their ambitions, their pasts behind them. When do we ever stop, if we can, and watch as the world passes us by? Shouldn't we run with the world? Run and try to catch up if we are lagging behind?

I want to thank everyone for the support given to me over the past year. Not many people still keep up with me from last year or from 2009, though there are many others, and I must thank you all. I can't ever express my appreciation or gratitude for it. Maybe we'll still be together next year, or maybe we won't... but I wish you guys all the best, nevertheless.

As always, I hope that some of your hopes and dreams are fulfilled in 2010, 2011 2012 and I hope that… those who are reading this (if you've managed to read all of it, kudos to you! ) and commenting on this are still with us, with me, this time, next year.


I normally end with a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, my favourite poet, but... the one who wrote this comes quite close.  

"Now our close heads, like under a gravestone,
are intact and locked. We turn,
in the thrift of sleep, each to his own;

negotiate in the same place,
one feat - the sucking and blowing
eight hours of air at a steady pace.

Imagine - you who can leap a gate
feet together with one hand on the bar
and swing to a halt for a second as you float...

in many kinds, in cobwebs, under wings,
on paws, in shells, the breathing enters you
into a unity of drowsing things;

and when I wake, the only sound's a sequel
of absurd tasks - this heaviness of air
and how you roll it uphill and downhill."

Sleep by Alice Oswald