An all-time cheesy conclusion to a year gone by...

Happy new one! (From after midnight where I am, but before midnight in North America...)

I was going to write this on Christmas night, but I got home from Qatar about 9 at night, exhausted from two brutal hours lost in Hofuf. There is no straight line through that city, or single uninterrupted road. I had plot a fourteen-step route from Google Maps, and noted an ambiguity at the very last step of the way: "Will I be able to turn left there?" But I thought in the worst case, I could turn right and do a Uey. (Everyone else does.) But that last critical step was closed completely, and without a map in my hand, had to wander around on my sense of direction. (Which is, fortunately, really really good, but I was chasing false assumptions, you know, about a city that would make logical sense.)

It wasn't so bad for a long time. "I'm a new world traveller and this is paying my dues." But then I hit two unmarked and violent speedbumps at about 80kph in the dark, and I just wanted to be home already.

The Qatar trip was good. There for a week, and I learned my way around this time, and ripped about 1500 shots with my camera of a huge variety of subjects (including my first model in over a year, a lovely Hindi flight attendant with a megawatt smile). And the trip was exactly the right kind of escape and relaxation. Robert kept me a little more busy than I would have chased myself, but I ended up seeing a lot because of it. Got a lot of great shots at the Doha Zoo, for instance, and learned my way to do some nighttime skyline shooting of my own.

It was all good for breaking in the new iPod. Finally took the leap right before the trip. Had been saying for years, "not until they're bigger." So now, 160gig! seems adequate. Half my entire collection, *lossless*, so that's why I'd need more space than "normal people." (I wouldn't mind AAC on the iPod, but I don't want to juggle two different formats.) Made a great "road trip mix" of about 1000 "forward" songs and only heard one twice in the whole trip, U2's "Rejoice." Heaven forbid. ;-)

However, interestingly, my hyper-sensitivity means that earbuds feel really bad for me, so I'm leaning against them in common use. Using it more for broadcasting to my own FM radio in the car. It's been nice to have wheels this year, but you can't imagine the stress of this traffic until one drives through it yourself. 5% of them speed like maniacs, and drive deliberately on the edge of risk. A lot of these kids drive with their headlights off at night in "stealth mode," and then flash their lights suddenly when they're driving up your ass at twice your speed. It sure keeps the left lane clear, that's for sure!, but it makes yourself drive faster because you just want to get it over with. There's a sense of "three hundred and sixty degrees of potential danger or impact" that I don't think most Americans can imagine. (And it hasn't helped my own nerves that I got rear-ended in November, while patiently waiting my turn.)

Anyway, it's been a good year for open ears to new music, though I am still fundamentally attached to proggy or punky rock music. To me, it's the music of vitality (not necessarily youth). For heaven's sake, Johnny Marr is three years older than me, and he joined Modest Mouse! I can't stop listening to We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank. And I've bought virtually all of their catalog from iTunes this fall. Crooked Fingers was my "dear" music of the year, so I've written little reviews of all their main albums on iTunes, if you're interested. (Look for "jTh.")

Jeez, I could review stuff until the day I die (or blog generally) - I'm so proud of the reception to my Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens review on Amazon - but I'm terrified of the impediments to getting real work done. But that said, I've got to make a new year's resolution to tame my most ferocious vice: *reading*. It comes and goes in waves as I attempt to wrestle with it, but it completely takes over all my available free time if I let it. I've pruned the majority of polblog reading, but I just find something else online to fill the void, science, history, psychology, technology, if left to my lazy devices. And I've got to beat myself back to the momentum that was lost from carpal tunnel in 2004 and from that whole disaster at deviantART between 2005 and 2006. (And I've left deviantART altogether this year.)

This is especially important because I met an unlikely character at a Christmas Eve party in Qatar, who's got all the know-how to grease my dream of becoming a travelling Photoshop instructor. (It was a conversation that just kept picking up steam. He's one of those "larger than life" characters with a ridiculous list of travels and accomplishments, but it takes a while for them to reveal themselves. But the barrell was downhill after about fifteen minutes, when it turned out that he went to Southwestern.) So I need to buckle down and get to work. "Not knowing the right people" isn't an excuse anymore.

But I'm so overwhelmed by all the different WAYS I could be working: on my art, on photography, on developing shots that I should finish for models, on research itself, on a damn web site! (Grrr... I have zero interest in that task that's got to get done.) I am torn in a dozen different directions, and nothing ever seems to get finished. But I'm hopeful to leverage the new contact for my own focus on driving the book toward completion. Not unrelated, but I found a stunning deal on the entire Adobe CS3 Premium suite of software, less than half than I would have paid in America, so now I'm armed with latest versions of Photoshop, Flash, DreamWeaver, and *InDesign* (the ultimate press and PDF software). And also Illustrator and Acrobat Pro. So there's no lack of software anymore. I need to focus on learning InDesign via a major project. My BOOK, dammit.

I've got the perfect job for it, a dream schedule come true that I'd been chasing half my life. Four hours of work a day, at NIGHT, and only nine months out of the year, so it's time to buckle down. Parallel to that, I need to buckle down on money and travel expenses too. Cost of living in America last summer was brutal. I don't think I'll be flying back across the Atlantic in 2008. (I can add a lot of bank by working an overtime semester in the summer here.) But it reinforces the worst thing about my whole scenario: I miss Biz! But I may try to have her flown over if I switch jobs into Oman next year. But Oman is probably going to be delayed a year longer than that. So I'm facing a year without Biz, and it hurts to think about, but I know Thad's taking dear care of her in Lexington. (And I know I made the most of our time together in summer 2007.)

So this has all been rambly, I know, but it should ideally illustrate a place in my life, anyway. Saudi drives a lot of Americans crazy, but I barely notice. It's easy to be at home, doing my own thing, and so long as I've got the internet, it just doesn't really rattle me. I don't like going to work but I usually enjoy it once I'm there. I've got one good friend on staff here, a couple of other decent cohorts, enought to get me by socially. (Alongside, I'd like to find love but I don't long for it anymore - it's easy to live without now.) We're almost done with the first semester, and then it's *another* vacation, poor me, haha. Might drive back to Qatar, then UAE and Oman (the most beautiful country on the Arabian peninsula), or might stay here and write like mad. (I'm leaning toward the latter, though the road trip with a cool Iraqi seems too rich to pass up.)

But I'll share a thought, if it's any use. Honestly, I think it's more applicable to me than you, my tendency to spin my wheels and settle for life as it is. Instead, I need to take more photographs, develop more of them, finish more art, get hustling on my book, and all that. I need to stop settling and make all my dreams come true. So I've written my new year's resolution in a bright red marker, to remind myself:

"Live the life you want to live."

Ha, maybe I'll add a phrase underneath it: "It's waiting." Hmmmm... ;-)

Anyway, wanted to get this new year off to the right start, letting you know that I'm thinking of you.

Happy two thousand and great!

The Last Straw of Solidarity

Sorry this has taken so long to write, but you know that brevity has never been my strong suit.

I was/am completely disgusted by the bannings of :devnifference:, :devSurrealistic-Geek:, and :devCageyButterfly: months ago, so earlier this year, I left deviantART. I engaged "the proper use of the Delete function" over a hundred times to reclaim all my work.

Exactly what we fought for, but I sure never intended to use it. And losing my outlet and audience there certainly isn't doing my artistic motivation any good.

But if legitimate criticism is met with hostility and a perma-ban, then I have no place there. (By that standard, I found Paddy's ban most shocking.) That place has never pretended to be a democracy, and neither would I accuse it of tyranny (since we're free to leave now), but clearly the monarchs will not welcome any scrutiny of their conduct.

So obviously I can say no more about it, not even here, since I do not want to be banned myself. And I wouldn't put it past them.

Instead, I would prefer that the record of our community action remain in my journals there. (Be sure that they're been thoroughly backed up, and find me at justThorne.com if they disappear suddenly.)

And besides that, I'd like to pop up there from time to time, to let you know how I'm doing.

I'll never forget, all the ways that you and deviantART changed my life.

:heart: