Tonight it is December 30, 2009. It is this time of year when it is customary to write long letters to distant family and acquaintances, because it is cold outside and there’s nothing better to do. Cabin fever sets in, and people start to reflect on what they could have been doing, and what they have done. People like to mail these reflections to everyone they know, along with a card of some sort. It is in that timeless holiday spirit that I reflect on the year that has gone by. Holy shit! What a year!

This time last year, I was “between jobs” as they say. I had just quit the first job that I had ever held for longer than a year. I’d been working at an international relief agency, as a web developer, and had been working there for two years or so. The job started as a temporary contract, to help them finish a total overhaul of their large website. I enjoyed the challenge of that work, and kept at it for a while. I’m not Catholic though, and I don’t know anything about international relief and development. Although it is certainly a good cause, it wasn’t exactly a dream job. I heard a rumor that there was a job opening at one of the art museums in town. I applied. I bought a new suit. That, along with the suit my parents bought for me, were enough to outfit me for two interviews. Luckily, there were two interviews, or else that second suit would have proved redundant. Most people who know me well would say that one suit, for me, might be one suit too many. 2009 was the year that I became the owner of two suits.

I did get the job. Officially, I’m now the “manager of web and social media” at an Art Museum. I started the job on January 5, 2009. My previous job ended in early December, which left most of this month last year for cabin fever and musing about things. It’s a wonder I didn’t write a letter like this last year, but there wasn’t much to write about.

I’d been living in a warehouse full of bohemians, art students, hipsters, slackers and the like. It’s called “The Copycat Building“. I moved there five years ago, when all I had to support myself was a part time job as a farmhand, back in West Virginia. I moved into the building with five roommates. By the start of this year, I had graduated to my own studio loft. It had good heat, large windows, high ceilings, and 800 square feet of space to call my own. It didn’t have much else. I liked it there. This time last year, I spent several weeks there, mostly to myself, mostly doing nothing. It was a nice vacation really, a slacker’s paradise.

Then, I started the new job. My first responsibility at the new job was to help oversee the launch of a new website for the museum. The website displays the whole art collection: if you can see it on the walls or in the galleries of the museum, you can now see that same stuff on the internet. In addition, you can see thousands of other things in the collection that aren’t on display for various reasons. It’s a very large website. It was a challenge to step into a project of that size, and to arrive so late in its development, but we eventually managed to get the thing online. People enjoy using the website and learning from it. I’m proud to have helped to make that happen and it was an excellent introduction to the museum and the collection of objects and people that make it live.

Once the website went online in a stable way, I got to thinking about books. The museum has a lot of books, medieval illuminated manuscripts and the like. Because books are so fragile, they can’t be displayed very often, or very well. We can’t just let everybody flip through the pages of a priceless, beautiful book. The museum has been digitizing the books, though. I was excited to learn this and jumped at the chance to get involved with the work to display these books online. I hope that someday soon we can allow people to flip through the pages of these books and read them, on the internet, even though they may never be allowed to see the actual books. I hope that this “virtual” experience can be very similar to the experience of actually reading these beautiful books. That’s one of my pet projects at work right now. I mention it as an example of the many reasons why, in 2009 I found a job that I enjoy very much.

Also in 2009, I was published in a writing residency sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts. The program is designed for writers who want to learn to write art criticism. Along with another writer, we were given a mentor, and set up with a group of artists. I met four artists, interviewed them throughout the year, and watched their work develop. The artists included a sculptor, a photographer, and two painters. It was a challenge for me to write art criticism. I had to learn a new vocabulary, and a new form of discourse. I didn’t go to art school, like most of the other people I encountered during the program, so I had some learning to do. I do think though that they chose me for the program in part because of that “outsider” point of view. In some ways, being new to the “scene” helped me to be objective and critical. It gave me an excuse to ask the obvious questions. It’s usually worthwhile to ask obvious questions. I guess I can say now that in 2009 I became an art critic. I hope that in 2010 I can exercise my new skill some more.

My other creative projects this year included two issues of the small literary journal that I publish called “Infinity’s Kitchen,” a spoken word album called “Strange Punctuation” and a band (of sorts) of experimental musicians and performers that I joined called “Second Land“. I’ve said so much about those projects already to most people that I won’t describe them much here. It was good to finally finish more than one creative project in a year, after several years of incomplete projects. I may yet complete some of those. I may never. Who knows?

The biggest and best thing that happened to me this year was that I bought a new home. It was a stressful experience, fraught with letdowns and restarts but in the end I bought the thing I had set out to buy. It was the very low real estate prices along with the stimulus tax credit that initially prompted the decision to buy. It was the location that sealed the deal for me. I can still walk to work. I can also walk to pretty much everything I need, too. The new place is full of all the things I need, thanks in no small part to all my friends who helped move. Thanks, you all.

I think one of the best developments for me this year has to do with people. I’ve connected with some friends to do some awesome creative collaboration. I had friends, roommates and neighbors this year who turned out to be tons of fun and good support, through it all. Overall, the year was a very social one for me. I needed that. Here’s just one example of one of the social (mis)adventures this year. A springtime tradition of weekly brunches lasted into the summer for a while. We came for the “bottomless mimosas”, stayed for the brunch, got drunk and called it “Drunch”. We all thought our new word was very funny, but you probably had to have been there. (see also: the wrestlemainia smartmob)

I spent a lot of time on Facebook in 2009, and so did practically everyone I know. This blog has suffered for content because of that, but maybe that’s for the best. A lot of what I used to put on this blog is better suited for Facebook, anyway. Here’s an interesting thing. It’s a collage of some of the status updates posted to Facebook over the year. It makes for a nice overview of the year.

Well, that’s it. It’s January 3, now that I’m wrapping up this year-end letter. Tomorrow, I’ll go to work and start the second year of my job. In the evenings I’ll drink green tea and do some overdue freelance work. I’ll probably take a break mid-week to go to the poetry open mic. Maybe on Friday I’ll see a show with my friends. That’s my plan for 2010 so far.

2008 was a fairly uneventful year here at nocategories.net. The site doesn’t get as many visitors as it used to, and so I don’t post very often, and because I don’t post often, fewer visitors come… and so it goes. All hope is not lost, though. Here’s a roundup of 2008′s most popular entries on this site. Other people liked this stuff. Maybe you’ll like it too.

Make Your Own South Park Character

Always a crowd pleaser, the little web page where you can design a south park character that looks like you, or anyone is mentioned here, under the name “make your own south park character“, which makes it easy to find, since that’s what people want to do. That is what the internet is for, after all: making south park characters.

Rough Living: An Urban Survival Manual

I posted a quick link to a book about how to survive homelessness, written from personal experience. Since then, the post has become the second most popular thing on this website. It is an interesting book. Says the author: “in 2000 I moved into my car and set out to learn what it takes to survive the day to day world of the United States without a steady income, without a home, and without most of what a lot of people think is essential to their lives. This book isn’t about how to live in public restrooms or how to steal muffins. This is a book for people that find themselves outside of what is normal in the United States and the rest of the world. This book is about surviving with much less than you think you need.”

Spoken Word, Recorded Poetry, and Hip-Hop

Three years ago, I was just starting to take some notes for what would become the spoken word album that I have just now finished producing at Magnanimous Records studio. I guess it took a while. I started by trying to get an overview of the different types of spoken word, recorded poetry, and hip-hop. It seemed to me that there are three “categories” of spoken word. Since I don’t like categories too much, I hope that my spoken word doesn’t fit too neatly into any of them. Those notes seem to be interesting to many other people.

I mentioned in that post that I wanted to list some examples of each type. I did end up collecting lots of examples of spoken word. I should share that list, shouldn’t I?

Software for Writers

There’s a maxim out there, variously attributed, which says: “serious writers should keep their work in circulation until it either sells or the ink wears off”. But it can be difficult to keep track of all those submissions, cover letters, editors, rejection slips, etc. Luckily, there are several good software applications that can help a writer to keep tabs on it all. I wrote an overview of software for writers. It’s pretty popular. (Now, I should probably eat my own dog food, so to speak, and start sending out more submissions!)

The History of and Development of Hypertext, and Hypertext Literary Theory

I’m happy to see that the first chapter of my undergraduate thesis is filling out this list of popular content on the site. I put a lot of work into it. For this chapter, I wanted to know: what is hypertext literary theory and were does it come from? If you are interested in the subject, or if you’ve never even heard of it before, this will provide you with plenty of information.

A new year begins, and an old year ends. It has happened on every day that has ever been one year after any day like it, for as long as there have been years. New Years Day is the one we have picked to think about it, to keep us from going crazy.

In the elevator the other day, I heard a remark, “I can’t wait until all the new year’s resolutions are over. The gym is too crowded at this time of year. I thought it might be nice to express my own thoughts about the New Year.

Personal Developments

2005 was a very unusual year for me. I moved several times. I left, returned to, and then graduated from college. My best friend and his wife have had a baby. I worked a variety of odd jobs: a night job doing tech support, a farm hand, a freelance web designer, and now I’m a business writer for a prominent investment firm. I went on an incredible, surreal adventure to the heart of West Virginia for the infamous “Red Party“. Oh, and I moved to Baltimore, yes, Baltimore, instead of New York. It was a diffficult choice.

I turned 25 years old in 2005. Maybe that explains why I have no idea who I am, at the start of this year. I exaggerate. I have some idea who I am; it’s just that the idea an unclear one. Ah, but whose isn’t unclear?

No Categories

None of the previously mentioned personal developments are mentioned anywhere on this website. What kind of blog is this anyway? Where are all the self-congratulations, and the “you-had-to-be-there” anecdotes? Where is the personal touch? The truth is, I’m not sure you care to read them, so I’m not sure I care to write them.

The biggest development for NoCategories this year came from the time I spent as a freelance web designer, this summer. I moved the site to a new, roomier, server. I had plenty of time to tinker with NoCategories, in order to figure out how to do things for clients (by breaking my site, not theirs). In some ways, I feel like that’s all I’ve done this year, tinkering, but I had fun with that, so be it.

I’m now a member of MetaxuCafe, a website devoted to highlighting the best content from the community of bloggers who write about books, writing, literature, etc.

Towards the end of the year, it seems like NoCategories has met with some kindred spirits, the physicalists. The physicalists seem to have an affinity for ideas like the ones that inspired this website in the first place. I anticipate that 2006 will see some fun things to do with that new friendship.

Speaking of fun things to do at No Categories. . . I intend to rebuild the no categories forum, by popular demand. When the site began, there was a forum for hanging out and heckling in, and now that graduation has spread my school friends afar like so many grains in the wind, and I’ve moved from my hometown, it might be nice to recreate the feeling of sitting at the pub, talking.

Writing

At the very beginning of 2005, I met with a programmer, my friend Chris, to discuss an extensive revision of the electronic novella I wrote for me senior thesis entitled, “To Win, Simply Play“. Chris showed me how he could make the text flow more easily: how the presentation could improve, and how the structure could be clearer. I was very excited about all of this at the time.

A year has passed now, and in that time my friend Chris has managed to record an entire album for his band the N.U.R.B.S.. The band performs on a regular basis all over the DC/Baltimore area, packing up their gear, practicing, writing songs, perfecting them. I think my friend Chris would have entirely forgotten about my silly little electronic novella. I’ve done nothing with it. It would have been nice to accomplish everything it seemed so likely to do a year ago, but it hasn’t happened.

I haven’t written any short stories this year, again. I do have a meager handful of poems. That’s something.

2005 was the year I “returned to the stage” so to speak, with a variety of spoken word events. Speaking of the N.U.R.B.S., my first performance was with another member of that band, Kurt, who had provided musical accompaniment for some of my earliest and most adolescent poetry readings, in the mid-90′s. I hadn’t done very much public reading since then, with the exception of a few readings in college, and a tour of the poetry slams in Boston. With the help of Kurt and company, I was able to get back into the swing of things in no time.

We’ve got plans to record some spoken word and release it to the world, sometime early this year. I’ve been taking notes about the spoken word project.

Since summer, 2005, I’ve been brewing an idea to act on my fascination with the almanack. I was going to write one, myself! But New Years 2006 crept up on me, and I never did it. It occurred to me that it might be easier to do in monthly installments, so that it would be naturally finished by the end of the year. I wonder, are there any interested contributors out there?

Books

At the end of 2004, I took the senior level literature class, which proved to be one of the most challenging classes I’d ever taken, (aside from third grade math and eigth grade biology) The class was “The History of the Novel”, and we read so many novels, and so much critical writing! Half of 2005 passed before I felt like picking up a book again, and I wondered if I ever would. I felt burnt out, but I recovered.

I’ve read several books about the sea. Its amazing to me that so many novels have chosen this as a subject. Notable favorites: Moby-Dick, Billy Budd, Sailor, The Old Man and the Sea, and Typhoon.

Material Minimalism

In 2005, I tried to get rid of things. I really hate having so many objects cluttering up my living space. It makes it difficult to move, difficult to clean house, and besides its just a lot of junk, mostly!

My most successful attempt was my assault on the piles of paper. I’ve also managed to scale down on the number of old audio tapes I have floating around, by downloading digital versions and giving the tapes away to friends. My old Nintendo games have been replaced with an emulator, and some ROMs. Wouldn’t it be great if I could digitize my book collection?

Unfortunately, there’s no way to “download” your clothes to get them out of your space, and I’ve yet to get the energy to sort through them. I have entirely too many clothes.

What a long, Strange Trip its been

Of course, I couldn’t have survived without the help of the people who pull my ass out of trouble every so often. Special thanks to everyone I know who owns an automobile, especially Nathan, Anna, and Alex. Thanks to everyone who let me couch surf at their place, since this year was very nomadic for me. Thanks to everybody who helped me find work to do while I was freelancing. I actually managed to stay alive! Can you believe it?

Ok, deep breath, 2006. . .