While this hasn't been a particularly bad year for me, I'm still going to be happy to see 2010 go.

I had some incredible experiences - including a trip to the Pacific Northwest in August, combined with some epic hiking around Mount Rainier - and made some creative progress, particularly in the roleplaying game I'm GMing and in the one I designed. But for the last few months I've been kinda sinking into a depressive spiral, spinning my wheels and retreating from social contact. Not really sure I can put any fingers on why, but depression is like that. If it were rational, it wouldn't be depression, just a reasonable reaction to difficult circumstances.

I'm hoping the turning of the seasons will help, because it generally does; the lack of sunlight (I get most of mine after 5 pm when work lets out) is something I distinctly notice each winter, and as a cold-blooded dragon (it's true, ask my wife) the temperatures also contribute to a general foulness of mood.

This is not even to get into weather craziness, like the last few weeks of constant rain followed by a cold snap that has iced my car doors shut for most of the past two days. California boy is not amused.

And just to end the year off with a bang, upon my return from work yesterday our cat Ocras took unusual exception to my routine of picking up his purring self and snuggling him, and bit me in my hand, right in the crook of my thumb. This is making it particularly painful to participate in my friends' annual LAN party. For extra bonus agony points, I've had no less than four people come into our office and shake my hand at work today. The number of them that are winners of the Nevada County Kung-Fu Grip competition is left as an exercise to the reader.

This litany of petty frustrations has nothing on what some of my friends have endured this year (which is another reason to be glad that 2010 is gone), but I'm trying to get it out of my system so I can get a little closure and recharge my emotional batteries. Plus, I haven't written anything of substance here in a while. I don't know if this will reach the level of a new year's resolution, but I need to write more in 2011, and that includes taking the time to open up about my life.

Peace out, and may you all have an excellent decade to come.

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