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| 2006 YEAR IN REVIEW
Just the other night I was talking about 2006 with a fellow painter of mine who had even a tougher year than I did. When I shrugged my shoulders and recapped my frustrations with the year, he made the perceptive comment that I seemed like I was happiest when I was traveling this year. When I thought about it, it didn't seem untrue. With rather
random trips to Houston, Dallas, Kansas City and Southern California sprinkled throughout the year, his statement was fairly spot on.
I've never lived in one place under my own will as long as I have I lived in Austin, and going on five years now, there's no telling whether there is an end in sight or if there should be. One of the scariest statements about Austin came on one of my funniest nights in town, at a Patton Oswalt comedy show just a few weeks ago. He commented about how much he loved Austin and how fortunate we were to live here, because we're (unknowingly) surrounded by the real world,
where all the virtues of Austin disappears. He went on a mild loving rant about the laid back and fanciful lives people lead here, largely living without jobs and worries (one of my friends called it the city young people go to just to retire) and said the only way you can ever leave is if you are eight years old, because there's no way you can fit back into society if you leave Austin when you are 38.
With a slew of uncertainty hanging over my head, I don't have a clue what the future holds, and I can't venture a guess as to where I'll be living or what I'll be doing in two, five or even ten years from now. That fact has never bothered me before, and its only mildly irritating now. So I invite you now to take a look around the pages in my 2006 recap and see what fruits, unexpected pleasures and challenges the year that is close to finishing brought me. |
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