I'm heading back up to Sheffield in a week and a day, almost to the minute actually, where I'll be spending 7 hours on a train hopefully writing something good and meaningful (or failing that, something witty, or just, you know, anything). But everyone knows I'm just going to be watching films and episodes of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and on Twitter going "Just passed Bristol!" and "going into tunnel now!", because that's the kind of interesting stuff I like to tweet about. After having spent the first few weeks of the new decade doing not an awful lot of anything, I'd like to think my decade starts when I return and can get things done.    There aren't any plans for the next decade, because ten years is a stupidly long amount of time to be planning anything. In ten years I managed to leave England, move to the exact opposite end of the world, spend the millennium celebrations at the Auckland Domain, moved house five times, change schools twice, make dozens of amazing friends before heading back to England and spend the remaining three years doing more of, well, exactly the same.

Planning ten years of your life is impossible, or at the very least, incredibly restricting. First thing's first, I gotta learn how to animate properly, then I gotta graduate. That's probably the only certainty in my life (debatably) . Ten years is too long to be thinking of anything. 

Hey, remember when the year 2000 was both a perfect utopia and a nuclear, Big-Brother-run dystopia? And we got something in the most boring part of the middle. But at least we have wireless internet. That shit is more futuristic than hover cars. And I guess half the nation is controlled by Big Brother, just not in the way George Orwell had predicted.

Oh, and technically the decade should begin in 2011 (and the new millennium should have been celebrated in 2001). But those who celebrated it then are just pedantic spoilsports, according to Douglas Adams

A brand new year has begun. The first in a brand new decade of what was, not too long ago a new millennium (and needless to say, century). Everything's pretty new, and is the usual pathos in this, it represents brand new beginnings and hope and all that. But, of course, it doesn't. It's another day which will be followed by another day the day after it, until we reach the end of the year which is full of reminiscence and then the eventual new beginning.       Everything ends, and everything begins again, but only if you choose to see it. That's not to say that the end of the year isn't something worth celebrating. 

There's a lot of things I want to get right this year, which I didn't quite seem to get last year. I'm not going to write up any resolutions, mainly because I haven't thought of any. It's going to be the usual mix of things, though: get that Wanderer comic off the ground, finish writing things, write new things, draw more, and, hell, why not even start a film or an animated piece while I'm at it. 

Remember way back when in my eager stages of planning for bits of life that wouldn't happen for years and years and years? It's all still happening. Nothing's ended, nor begun. I'm still running around in circles trying to find decent plots for these three stories. If life in Sheffield proves to be as excellent as it's been lately, I'm pretty sure I can see a really good year ahead of me. 

I wonder if Fool Face Reilly got my New Year's text

I'm listening to my "sounds of 2009" playlist which I just created, which instead of being good music from 2009, it's music I listened to a shitload in 2009, which includes undoubtedly, the musical genius and lyrical mastery of Amanda Palmer and Dresden Dolls. Mr Children's Home album and their B-Sides compilation album have certainly awarded themselves a place in this (as well as all their other songs I have), as have AC Newman, Coeur de Pirate, and Regina Spektor.     It's a pretty good playlist.

I'm going to end this entry with this benediction from my author idol, Neil Gaiman, because everything I've tried to write has sounded really forced and unbelievably cheesy:

"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art - write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. May your coming year be a wonderful thing in which you dream both dangerously and outrageously.

"I hope it'll make something that didn't exist before you made it, that you will be loved and you will be liked and you will have people to love and to like in return. And most importantly, because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now - I hope that you will, when you need to be, be wise and that you will always be kind. And I hope that somewhere in the next year you surprise yourself."

Happy New Year, everyone. I hope it's a great one.