Twas the week before Christmas...

Last night there was a lunar eclipse. I got the chance to view it from the roof of the building where I work because I was helping the assignment editor with the camera equipment because the news department wanted footage of it but there was no one else who would come in overnight to do it. The best time to see it, apparently, was between 2 and 4am. Also, coinciding with the eclipse was not only the winter solstice but the Ursids meteor shower, which I unfortunately could not see because of a giant wisp of cloud blocking the northern sky.

There was something unique about the night as I was on the way to work. I got there early and stepped back out into the night to pick up a snack at the Duane Reade on 8th and 16th and noticed something odd. It was quiet. Of course, I didn't have my headphones in and when I say quiet I don't mean backwoods country quiet but there were few people outdoors and any ambient noise seemed far off. Maybe it wasn't that the city was quiet but that some of the din was stripped away so that it was almost like you could hear the city breathing. Some of the hum of heating vents on the giant Port Authority building and a few fire trucks some four or five blocks to the north were all I could really hear. I relished in it and took my time getting back into the building for work.

It's hard to believe I'm going into my third year in the city. I had friends in the city this weekend for a brief visit and they asked me how I was liking it. Whenever I'm asked this, I usually answer, when the person has barely finished the question, that I love it and I'm never leaving. I have found, however, that it is nice to leave on occasion, but that the place pulls you back relentlessly. I've never felt this way about a place. To some it might be laughable but a lot of other people get it, even if they don't get New York (or Brooklyn...although most people I know who know Brooklyn, get why and how you could love it).

At this time of the year, and more so now, especially since I've been deepening my yoga practice and becoming more aware, I start to think about goals for the following year and accomplishments from the previous one. I think this year, I'm going to divide it into two categories, things I'm going to do and things I'm going to change.

I just re-read a blog from this week last year and, though I only vaguely outlined my resolutions there, I figured it was a good place to start with what I'll do, by looking at what I said I'd do last year. What stuck out is that I said I'd write prolifically like I did back in 2007 after I restarted graduate school, and I can't really say that I did. I had a few good gigs and some great accomplishments, don't get me wrong. But the sheer output of new material just wasn't there. I think, in the interest of being realistic, what I did then was to focus on defining long term goals instead of struggling to do a lot of stuff. Which is why I started the voice over career and why I began to really flesh out my ideas for the live electronic music project. But now that those plans are in place, I need to focus on what's going to make me accomplish them.

I thought about what it was that made me write so much back in 2007 and it was first, emotional trauma (divorce), but more than that, it was the prospect of having it all performed. That's what I lacked last year. This year, I already have at least one performance slated and the live electronic music project, if all goes well, will have built-in incentive to write because of the potential for live performances. Hopefully, this will work to my advantage.

As for voice over, right now I'm volunteering at Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, which will ensure that I keep practicing even if I don't always get to it at home, but soon, I'll have to start applying for jobs. So that's my strongest resolution, to be aggressive in my attempts at job hunting for VO jobs. Beyond that, I'm going to get the electronic music off the ground and I'm going to submit a few of the things I did finish last year to competitions and try to plan to record them, along with some of the old stuff.

The things I'm going to change, however, I'll work on on my own in the next week or so. For now, I'm going to wind down. I get to sleep in tomorrow so I must take advantage. On Christmas morning I have to work at 6am and I'm not looking forward to getting up that early. Especially since I just went to bed today at 730am. Good night and Merry Christmas.