In the year now behind me, I traveled to twelve states, thirty-six cities and one other country.

And I’m bored to hell with all of it!

Let us see, Ryan (me), if we can’t do better in this new decade (even though, technically, the new decade doesn’t begin for another year).

Okay, I say.

I have roughly two free round-trip flights to any city in the continental United States. I think that maybe I will go to Boston and San Francisco. Maybe Portland. I want to go to Portland.

Do I want to go to Portland more than Boston or San Francisco? I don’t know! I’ve seen Boston before, sure, but there’s something going on there in March, so hell, maybe I’ll see Boston again.

I have a weekend excursion in Lexington in March, too. There I will see my two cousins and a handful of other Very Important people in my life. There are so few, these days!

The government is about to pay me one-thousand U.S. dollars for being a non-dependent school-going citizen, so maybe I’ll go to a foreign country this year. Not Japan, okay! Perhaps I will go to Vienna, or Graz! Who knows!

Come to think of it, I have a girl-cousin in Graz. Her name is Susi. I have no idea if she reads any of this garbage. I can only hope that she doesn’t — for her sake.

Okay, sorry: enough with this going-places-doing-things talk. I’m awfully sad to have to talk about this stuff, but it’s been bubbling around in my head the last few days, because all I’ve had to do is think and sit around. There is, I will have you know, roughly three feet of powder-soft snow on the ground, just outside my bedroom window. I contemplated jumping from that window and landing in aforementioned powder-soft snow, though really, how am I to hop onto an airplane with crutches? How unsavory! I dashed this dream and instead made pesto-filled tortellini complimented with diced bell peppers and a whole onion! It was fantastic. I think I’ll have it again real soon.

I really need to find another room in the house to do this. I get in the same two-in-the-morning mindset when I sit down to write this stuff. Here I am, at the very end of my bed, soggy with midnight gloom, thinking of dead friends again. It’s the same thing, man. The same thing every night! I have a lot of stuff I write and never do anything with, because it just sounds like I’m trudging through sludge, and maybe I’m not comfortable with revealing that. So, it’s just sitting on a sever somewhere in California, waiting to be digested as sticky malaise. Maybe I’ll do something with the junk I keep in my attic, so to speak, but maybe not.

Though I must say, it’s a nice idea that I’ll be paid for writing stupid crap like this next week. I’m tickled silly with the idea!

That was a lie, actually. I don’t really care. I know all of it is going to be minced to hell to adhere to the standard that everything that is going into the newspaper must be odorless and colorless and hive-mind. Well, hey! I’m not the one filling out the checks, do I don’t give a good God damn what happens to the mindless slop that I’ll be typing up in ten-to-fifteen seconds!

I’m just being a jerk on purpose. Man. Okay, I’ll stop.

I’m not really interested in paychecks with my name on them, or newspaper articles with my name on them. If they allow me to write under a pen name, I’ll gladly do it. I schedule to think of something wonderful to call myself in the bath tomorrow. See, I don’t have anything to do tomorrow, because there is three feet of damned snow on the ground.

I shoveled my walkway like a psychopath yesterday. I felt like a real American out there — it felt awful.

You can’t walk for ten steps without having a heart attack out there, I swear. I’m probably long-dead and haven’t yet realized it. I’m probably just a faceless ghoul clattering away at the keys on a laptop, and my corpse is frozen stiff under a mound of godless ice, just outside my bedroom window. That’s probably what happened.

I really should jump out of that window, come to think of it.

Maybe not.

I want to go to more states and countries this year — probably shouldn’t risk a broken neck.

I only ever want to go anywhere because if I keep doing the same thing for so long, I’ll end up turning the knife on myself when I cut the bell peppers to sprinkle onto my pesto-filled tortellini dinner. I’d better not put myself in a position where that is my only option!

Then again, might be dead!

Do the dead haunt planes? I don’t know. Someone, somewhere has had a heart attack on a plane, I don’t doubt it.

God, I really need to stop this!

I need to start writing in the living room!

Or from planes!

No, no — only jerks write from planes. What a jerk thing to do, write on a plane.

See, really, I’m going to stop this right now. Even I don’t give a fat, slobbering fuck about what I’m doing every day, or what I have done, or plan to do. I’ve got this whole “don’t be disingenuous” thing going on from now until I’m dead (am I dead?), so it would be detrimental to my, uh, mental health to continue to pelt you, whomever you are, with information about what career I want (hah!), or where I intend to live (nowhere), or whatever. Whatever, man!

Whatever!

Jumping out of the window right this secon–

lol