I stare at this screen with about a dozen thoughts jumbled in my head, each clamoring for the attention it deserves while competing with the nagging thought that none of them actually will.  In my oft-mentioned “drafts” portion of the blog, I see an unfinished post that barely got started looking back at the year 2008 and I sigh in the knowledge that not only was that the only year I even attempted an actual “Year in Review”– at least of the variety I’m known for– but it wasn’t even finished.  Story of this blog.

New Year’s is always about endings and beginnings.  Putting a nice big bow on the year that’s now over, waxing philosophical about how this next year will be different, and never really noticing that it seldom ever is.  I find myself torn between this cynical truth and the raw hope that such new beginnings nevertheless inspire.

Punctuated equilibrium theory holds that all change in incremental in nature, that negative feedback prevents massive change from occurring– maintains the status quo– until triggering events (punctuations) knock over the table and we’re left with a new status quo.  I can think of at least two punctuations in my life likely to happen in 2012, but how that changes the status quo– that I don’t know.  I’d like to think (perhaps too optimistically) that there will be a net positive change, but that’s hard to say. Check back with me in a year’s time.

I’d originally considered doing a full on Year in Review series of posts, but decided that was only setting myself up for disappointment.  Plus there’s something remarkably superficial about reducing a year’s time to the books I read, movies I saw, video games I played… it’s part of the reason I stopped doing them almost a decade ago.  So instead of long-winded posts of each in turn, here’s the summary:

• Game of the Year is The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim because it sucked me in completely in a way no ES game has before and was just a marvel to behold. At a time when I’m gravitating away from RPGs, it came along with the depth and freedom I was looking for.  (Honorable mentions Portal 2, Batman: Arkham City, Uncharted 3, Super Mario 3D Land, Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and Star Wars: The Old Republic).
• Movie of the Year is more difficult to say. I kind of forget a lot of what I saw this year and am sure it was predominantly geek-fare.  My gut says it was probably Thor, though, because in a year full of comic book movies, it was the best blend of incredible action, character, humor, and the fantastical.  Honorable shout-out to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 if for no other reason than that reaching the end of the movies (of which I enjoyed all) with the same set of actors (sans Dumbledore) was an incredible feat and one which gives the series a level of emotional depth that few series reach. Does it replace the books? No. But all of the actors sticking with the series for 8 movies makes them far more special than if they’d shifted things halfway as originally intended.
• Book of the Year… The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss.  No contest.  I anxiously awaited this book for years and it did not disappoint (plus I was able to snag a signed copy to boot).  I cannot imagine how he can tie everything off in one more book, but I will be there to read it.  Rothfuss’ story is something special and everyone should be reading it. Non-Fiction I’d have to give the nod to Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, which was fascinating to read (even when it wasn’t particularly flattering to Steve).

So, there we have them all over and done with with.  A paragraph each and all done while it’s still 2011 (for me, anyway, dunno what the timestamp will read).  What I hope for 2012 is more time to do the things I enjoy, less time spent worrying about (and doing) the things I don’t (but have to).  This past week, in something of a marvelous modern accomplishment for me, I read four books, cover to cover.  My current track record is more typically to start books, read a few chapters, set them aside, lose interest over time, start something else, let the pile grow.  To not only finish one, but finish four in a single week? Fantastic feeling. One I would like to have more often in 2012, because 2011 just flew by with too few of them.

Oh, and I’d also like the world to not end next December. Just a tad. 😉

I go now to welcome the New Year in optimistically (I’m a sucker). Hello, 2012!

Bye 2011.