{"id":152,"date":"2003-12-26T22:24:54","date_gmt":"2003-12-27T01:24:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/?p=152"},"modified":"2016-10-17T21:16:06","modified_gmt":"2016-10-18T01:16:06","slug":"a-very-brief-year-in-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/a-very-brief-year-in-review\/","title":{"rendered":"A very brief year in review"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am so.f**king.tired&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>Please forgive me gang, I don&#8217;t have the energy to do another <a href=\"http:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/without-me-e-remix\/\" target=\"offsite\">New Years Eve extravanganza<\/a> like last year.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and I may be wrong&#8230; but I think a lot of people want to let 2003 go quietly off into the night anyway.<\/p>\n<p>I sure as hell do. It wasn&#8217;t a &#8220;great&#8221; year, by any stretch of the imagination, but it was certainly better than the two that came before it.  Have I mentioned how friggin&#8217; tired I am?<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nNot tired like &#8220;it&#8217;s way past my bed time&#8221;.  The kind of &#8220;tired&#8221; you saw in grandpa&#8217;s eyes the last time you saw him alive.  The kind of &#8220;tired&#8221; Freddie Prinze felt when he stopped hearing the laughter.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve felt like this for months. A co-worker thinks it&#8217;s early signs of clinical depression. Sure. I bet that&#8217;s what any doctor will say once they find out I have excellent medical coverage too. Like I always say: &#8220;Only the coroner will know for sure&#8221;. :0)<\/p>\n<p>Or I could just point out the obvious&#8230; I&#8217;m burnt out from one hell of a year.<\/p>\n<p>But hey&#8230; this is a happy post. And it was a year of great achievements and triumphs for me! So here it is&#8230; the good and the bad:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Hiatus<\/b> &#8211; This site officially returned from a year and a half frozen in stasis (now known as the &#8220;Enemy of the State&#8221; years) in May. Those days are behind us now. No more looking over our shoulders and hearts siezing when the door knocks or phone rings.<\/li>\n<li><b>Child Abductive Services<\/b> &#8211; CPS finally let us go, semi-intact (after a serious ass-kicking from my employer&#8217;s corporate attorney with kung-fu grip over a ridiculous court order.). Only took 2 1\/2 years to close the case as &#8220;unfounded&#8221;.  Seems they wanted to close it even more than we did.\n<p>I have to remember&#8230; <a href=\"http:\/\/familyrightsassociation.com\/news\/archive\/2003\/dec\/25.html\" target=\"offsite\">thousands of families all over the country weren&#8217;t as lucky<\/a>. They don&#8217;t have the resources, connections and &#8220;know-how&#8221; that I do.<\/li>\n<li><b>Letting go<\/b> &#8211; I had to say goodbye to a lot of friends and allies this year.  Welcome a few back into the fold too.  Not to mention making a lot of really cool new friends. It doesn&#8217;t mean I don&#8217;t care, and doesn&#8217;t mean I&#8217;ll ever forget or stop being grateful for what they&#8217;ve done in the past (despite how much much they exaggerated their part to others).  Maybe they don&#8217;t understand why I did it, but everyone else seems to get it.\n<\/li>\n<li><b>Irony or &#8220;Curse of the Warlock&#8221; again?<\/b> &#8211; Last year saw a con man indicted (inevitable), a former business partner learning they&#8217;re dying of Hepatitis C (well, coincidental but explainable), a person I knicknamed &#8220;RoboBitch&#8221;, for her cold robotic demeanor, ending up with some funky metal apparatus on her leg in court against me (come on&#8230; that&#8217;s hilarious).\n<p>This year finds an old nemesis (who has made my family&#8217;s life a living hell these past three years) in a legal situation in which there is no escape, and finds them in the same brand of &#8220;railroaded injustice&#8221; that he has inflicted on many people himself (a la &#8220;The Twilight Zone&#8221;).  I really wish I could elaborate on this for those who have no &#8220;FARK&#8217;in&#8221; idea what I&#8217;m talking about.  <\/p>\n<p>Then again, those who have no idea what I&#8217;m talking about now thinks I&#8217;ve gone off the deep end, anyway. :0)  <\/li>\n<li><b>The Shaman Prohecies<\/b> &#8211; Back in late 2001 I posted something on &#8220;EOS&#8221; called &#8220;Tales from a Dead Shaman&#8221;, where I recalled an incident in my apartment in Queens in &#8217;94. (I tried explaining this one in this post&#8230; it was long and creepy. You wouldn&#8217;t understand, so I removed it.  But yes, I see dead people.)\n<p>Well, anyone that remembers it (not that I&#8217;m egotistical enough to think you have every word I&#8217;ve written over the years committed to memory.), well, obviously it came true to a certain degree, now didn&#8217;t it? Plans to continue help clean up the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politicspa.com\/\" target=\"offsite\">back yard of my new home<\/a> and help those down on their luck will continue all through next year.<\/li>\n<li><b>The &#8220;C&#8221; word<\/b> &#8211; Cancer has reared its ugly head in the lives of quite a few of my CyberPals this year.  I can&#8217;t say too much on this matter at this time, but let&#8217;s say my home has been no exception. As open as I&#8217;ve tried to be on my site, this one&#8217;s a personal matter for my family, and I feel I have no right airing this one out in public.<\/li>\n<li><b>Diversity is our strength<\/b> &#8211; In my <a href=\"\/links\/\" target=\"onsite\">links list<\/a>, I find a wide variety of people with views, cultures and backgrounds that I was unaware of and maybe disagree with on a point or two. But when you look really close&#8230; you find we&#8217;re not so different after all. A lot of them will never link back to me, but that&#8217;s ok&#8230; I link to them because I find them interesting. Many of you have changed my life, my views and my core beliefs as you touched my life with your words, and let me see the world through your eyes. Maybe more people will see what a gift the Internet is in the year to come.\n<p>People who continue to polarize everyone&#8230; I&#8217;ll continue to ignore them as well.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Much like this year.  2004 will get better than its predecessor.  Slowly working ourselves towards our goals (whatever yours may be) and prosperity.  A very surrealistic cycle is ending and things are falling back into place.<\/p>\n<p>Do you\/will you have a recap on your site of events that happened in your life in 2003? Feel free to ping me here.  I&#8217;d certainly be interested in seeing it.<\/p>\n<p>Happy New Year everyone!<br \/>\n(And stop looking at me like that!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am so.f**king.tired&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>Please forgive me gang, I don&apos;t have the energy to do another New Years Eve extravanganza like last year.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-as-the-web-burns"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A very brief year in review - SoApBoX<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/a-very-brief-year-in-review\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A very brief year in review - SoApBoX\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I am so.f**king.tired....  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