And now, my friends, the time has come to ponder what this past year has been to my life.

It has been one of the longest years of my life, and one of the most difficult, but I cannot call it the worst. Nor can I call it the best. It was not bad, and it was not great, but it was good. There are many things upon which I can look back with joy, and those which I can look back upon with remorse, as well. That's life, though.

I've changed so much in the past year. I guess that's what happens in twelve months. But these twelve months especially. Probably I've learned more in the past year than I ever have in the space of a year. Likely I have undergone more alteration than I ever have in such a period. Possibly all this is true. But of one thing I am sure: in this past year more than ever, I have ameliorated.

I look back at last January and I just feel like slamming my face into my desk. In fact, I think I will. Ouch. Okay, that's done.

Reading over my journal (something all writers should keep) I wonder who that fool could have been who wrote some of the thoughts there placed, in all their obtuseness, where they will forever have posterity in my memory. Hard as I may try to forget that time, I will always keep my idiocy there to remember. Oh, not that I was an cool dude, at any rate not much more than I am now. I am, in many ways, the same person I was then. When I look back at writing style, for instance, little has changed there, bar maybe a few improvements and perhaps even a few degradations--and little, I positively believe, tells more about a person than what they write and how they write it. But in one way I was very much a fool; in one way I made a mistake I have not yet been able to live down.

Now the subject is decidedly personal and I am sorry that I must be vague. I can but say that, some fifteen months ago, I wronged some one quite close to me. Be assured it's not nearly as serious as it sounds; only to me. Not even to they whom I have wronged, I think, does it matter as much as it does to me. I know this sounds illogical and probably does not make much sense; even if I elucidated the situation in minute detail you would still see it that way. Possibly you're right, but that can't change how I feel about what I've done, can it? Maybe I'm being irrational--no, I confess it, I am. But maybe this isn't the place for rationality.

Dispensing with these recondite adumbrations, I think I will pursue the more tangible thread of thought I have extricated from the tangle. Rationality: Is it really so important?

No, I don't think it is. What it comes down to, I think, is prudence. That seems to be the only ubiquitously foolproof answer to any question: prudence. Not reason exactly, not logic nor rationality, but the prudence to decide when and which of these to apply, or when to resort rather to one's faith, another's wisdom, or one's own heart.

To put it succinctly I will quote myself, or rather my intelligent friend Reise: "Though knowledge and logic may not always steer you right, faith and wisdom will never fail."

The greatest difficulty is in finding a complex solution to a simple problem. Maybe my difficulty is in looking for one. Maybe it is a simple solution I should be seeking!

But, well, that's neither here nor there, is it? That's all in the past. And what I am to do now--that's probably been boring you, has it not? It is my philosophy not to allow myself to be absorbed in what is done and unchangeable. For to do so is to forsake the opportunity to actively carve the future. When I make a mistake, I learn from it and move on. When I fall, I pick myself and keep walking.

I'll trip again, there's no doubt about that. It can't be helped! One of the most foolish things a person can do is to fear the future because it holds unpredictable hazards. These same people are usually the nostalgic types, too. To yearn what is lost and fear what is to come--this is absolute folly. Natural, perhaps, but folly. We must learn from the past; we must look to the future; but we must live in the moment!

This is New Year's Eve; a time to look back. So I allow myself the time to do so. Tonight will be a time to enjoy the moment. And tomorrow will be a day to look to the future!

Sincerely, Nuile: Lunatic Wordsmith