GOALLLLLLLLL!

I’ve had a couple of train wreck days here lately, and Friday was definitely the icing on the cake. Evan was more temperamental than he’s been since he was born, and it was just because he’s been such a good kid, not prone to tantrums or other big displays without a reason, that it caught me off guard. And I know he’s still a good kid – I don’t believe there’s really “misbehavior” at the almost-four-month mark, just reactions to stimuli that I’m just not picking up on. (It doesn’t really help that I’m worn out at the moment.) It just alarmed me to feel like he was testing my patience, even though he wasn’t. It wasn’t him, just all in my head.

I’m not usually one to go for the New Year’s Resolution thing, because I’ve been at 1024 x 768 for years. That and, well, while I’m not going to say I can’t keep a promise to save my life, my circumstances seem to change so randomly that I try not to make any promises that I’m not sure I can keep. That’s part of the reason I never, ever, ever do the Secret Santa thing anywhere – the way my fortunes roll, I might be less able to carry through by the time it comes to gift-buying time than I was when I signed up in the first place. I tell my little boy every night that daddy’s always right around the corner from him while he sleeps, but do I really know that? One drunk driver coming around the corner so fast that he misses the curve in the road and plows into the front of the house is more likely to take out anyone who’s in the game room than they are anything else. And somewhere out there is a tragic dirigible accident with my name on it (oh, the humanity!). So, whatever it may seem to say about my character, I don’t make any more promises than I absolutely have to. Life seems too random, at least for me, to make forward-looking statements like that (in Wall-Street-speak).

I do, however, have stuff I’d like to do. Before that tragic dirigible accident. Here are two that I’d really like to get off of my list this year – or at least make a start on. One of them is something that everyone else would probably like me to get a move on with, the other is a “just for me” thing.

The PDF Documentary Thing. I kinda need to finish the CGE DVD project first (which is more of a daunting thing than I’d really given it credit for – you know in the movies where the camera is looking down a hallway, and the director moves the camera forward and zooms out at the same time, suddenly making the hallway look a hell of a lot longer than it is? It’s like that.), and I still want to do the PDF DVD that’s been on hold for a year now. But as far as the real documentary goes – the full-up thing with interviews and the whole nine yars* – I’m hoping that I might have finally gotten the attention of a couple of the right folks. Where that will go, and whether or not I’m in a position – between being broke and staying home with Evan all the time – to take advantage of the launch window if and when it opens, who can say? So much of this is way out of my control that I often feel really discouraged about it…but no less passionate that someone, somewhere should get the damn job done right, and tell the stories that we know are waiting to be told. If Discovery Channel’s “Rise Of The Video Game” hadn’t been such a putrid pile, I would’ve congratulated the show’s producers, thanked them for relieving my life of a burden, and gone and curled up to cry somewhere. As it is, I guess the task of doing the definitive video game documentary is still staring me down. Makes me want to go curl up and cry somewhere. For those who are still eagerly awaiting the CGE DVD project, my apologies – it will happen, but I’ve had just a few minor distractions over the past year.

The music thing. This other one is a just-for-me thing. Just so I can say I did it. I may be so embarrassed with the results that I may never let another soul hear it. But as soon as I can snag a USB-MIDI cable, I really need to get back into the world of recording all the music that pops into my head, just to get it out of my head and into some kind of a medium that other people could, theoretically, hear (providing, of course, that the end result doesn’t suck). This would mean I’d have to sing, which is where it all falls down – but the snare in that trap is that, in order to get someone else to sing it, I’d have to sing it to at least that one other person, so catch-22. I’ve got a heap of songs that I happen to think are really good material, waiting to get out of my head, and I’m feeling the urge to sweat the details to get that material out of there. We’re not talking about all of the bizarro instrumentals that already inhabit my music page, but real live rock ‘n’ roll (albeit rock ‘n’ roll as filtered through a lifetime of exposure to Mssrs. Lynne, Finn and Parsons, though I won’t even try to sell you on the claim that either the songs or their execution – which may be a more apt term than I realize – would be up to their standards). Sooner or later, I’ve gotta get these songs out of my head and onto some other, more reliable medium – or just give up and go mad with the knowledge that a bunch of perfectly good music is going to die with me someday.

Those are the things I’d like to at least start on this year. There’s much much more that I’d like to do with my life – such as chasing down the definitive video game documentary with the definitive documentary of the Star Wars action figures and other doodads – but I thought setting two “would-like-to-do-if-the-opportunity-arises” goals would be much much more realistic. After all, I did make one resolution for this year – to be a good dad – and that’s the only promise that I absolutely, positively must keep.

Everything else is negotiable.

Hey, maybe this music thing will take so long that Evan might emerge as a really good singer. Man, would that let me off the hook. But I’d still have to sing the stuff to him so he’d be able to follow it (since I can’t write or read musical notation on staff paper to save my life). Poor kid.

* OK, that wasn’t a typo. It was REVENGE!