Just a memory: 2008 wraps up

For a week or so now I’ve been trying to write about 2008, my own summation of yet another year. There’s really no need to. Anyone who has been alive through the year has his or her own idea of what it was like, but I decided to write something as a personal assignment just to see what I’d come up with.

It hasn’t gone well.

To begin with, given the way 2008 came to a close (economics, weather, etc.), it was just too easy to malign the entire year and write some grouchy, misanthropic rant. In fact, most of my attempts have gone that way.

Part of the problem, I thought, was that 2008 doesn’t/didn’t actually exist, just as 2009 doesn’t really exist – not in any tactile, real-world way. It’s a mental construct. It’s not like flowers or buildings or cats. It’s all in our heads. It’s a way to keep track of what we do and what happens in our lives.

That thinking was because I didn’t want to write something.

Finally, since the scribbling was not catching flame, I decided to steal my own words from an email I sent to family and friends, and post a little video that summarizes the year as well as I’m able. What I like about the video is its banality. No earth shaking events, personal or public. Just day to day life as I’ve been living it.

So, from my email:

My mother use to wonder how it was that someone who wrote as much as I do, and who wrote such "lovely letters," didn't do so more often. I've wondered that too. All I can say regarding that is, whenever I attempt something along those lines, I can never think of what to write. Letters or emails such as this one usually are about relating recent incidents. Sort of, "This is what's been happening with me." But I can never recall what's been happening.

I recently read that the ability to recall personal experiences is something that goes with age. They call it autobiographical or episodic memory and the passage of time makes it flee like delinquents when the cops show up. However, I find it difficult to think my problem is this since I've had this problem from at least age 18.

My solution has always been to ramble, as I'm doing now, so as to avoid recounting what has been happening in my life. (Of course, it's entirely possibly nothing has been happening and I simply live a life utterly bereft of consequence. A Kafka thing without the bug transformation.)

This year (note how I write that as if this is something I do every year – ha!), I decided to go through photos I had taken to see if they would jog my memory. I did so and, seeing them, I determined I would make a video using them.

However, as I went through the photos, what I found was an idea. Instead of finding the highlights of my year and relating them, I would make a video of the ordinary, everyday things. For example, I'm very pleased I have images of the Superstore in this video. Who does that?

"What did you do in 2008?"

"Well, I went to the store a lot."

I call that thinking outside the box. I expect a call from Scorsese any day now.

You may or may not recognize people in this video. Hopefully, you'll know which one is me. You'll also be able to recognize Molly Bloom (dog) because she's all over the place. Other than that, there are quite a number of friends, my sister, and oodles of people of whom I know nothing.

All in all, it's a pretty good summation of the year: Grocery store. My favourite pub. Dogs. Floods. Wine. Stella Artois. Babies. Snow.

Heavens, there's even a woodpecker! And a car in a swimming pool!

Yes, it's quite a life in New Brunswick.

I hope your Christmas was all you could have hoped for and more. I also hope your 2009 is exciting, bountiful and prosperous (especially if you're the world economy). I rather like this "ordinary" life, though it's not for the faint of heart. Oh, ... for those with dogs, may the poop you pick up not be runny.