The year closed out with a long, odd week. Today it feels like my New Year's Day hangover has lingered, minus physical symbols but still putting me in that strange detached headspace typical of certain hangovers.

My thought earlier today was that I feel like an "adult," which is basically not something anyone over, say, 23 should be saying with any sort of earnestness. I know. There's no one reason for it: I haven't taken on any new responsibilities, haven't completed any sort of rite of manhood, and haven't been forced to reconsider my behavior or my place in the world.

Still, for the first time in a while... I dunno quite how to describe it. Not clarity, not contentment, and certainly not motivation. Detachment is getting close to it. Control maybe, or rather a change from being in control of a car on an icy road to being in control of the television remote on a Sunday night.

I buzzed my head after Christmas. My hair had been getting very shaggy, and I like to believe that I store my stress there, and that by cutting it off I can shed my troubles like snakeskin. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.

This time I don't think it did, and I had some major stress since, which I'm not about to describe in detail to the Internet of all people (don't worry everything is fine now). And that, combined with all the petty worries and the slow buildup of missed opportunities and bad decisions that come with living life with any sort of engagement — it was a problem.

But on Friday night I went to a good party, had fun, got drunk, stayed up extremely late, and then as my hangover all-too-slowly went away on Saturday, I was left feeling like this. Whatever this is.

This is the blank slate that I was hoping for: 2011. I've fumbled slightly here and there already (keep in mind I was hungover or drunk for a good percentage of early 2011, as previously mentioned), but I haven't made any real mistakes yet, haven't hurt or been hurt, and everything that was bothering me — either I've successfully locked it away where I don't have to worry about it, or it'll catch up with me again at some point, hopefully not today.

But I wouldn't describe myself as content. Or restless for that matter. Hard to say too much more about my state of mind without crossing the line between description and composition, in any case.

I took a nap on Saturday, which is saying something in itself, and essentially skipped most of the day. Since I wasn't about to leave the house I had my cousin Marz and her b/f Aeron over for some Last Night on Earth.

I played the zombies and won not easily, but certainly definitively: by killing every single Hero until they had no one left to play as. Not since I first beat Forbidden Island have I been so amazed at the outcome of a boardgame. I could probably have gone to sleep then, but with those two here it was worth my while to stay up and 100% some LBP levels. They're probably the only two people I know who aren't sick of the game.

This morning I put on my Pajama Pants of Motivation (Cursed - Player Cannot Leave The House) dinked around, and made a batch of homemade cheese. My brother Josh and his wife Erin got me the book Wild Fermentation for Christmas and I've been making a lot of stuff from there in the past week, since I haven't had the time for real brewing.

Christmas this year was good, since I haven't mentioned it here yet. We had three Christmases, our family and then both sides of extended relatives, over the course of one weekend before actual Christmas, up at my parents' house.

The family Christmas in particular was a lot of fun, with some good jokes and an epic late-night game of Polish Pinochle. The presents I bought for that seem to have been well-received, and I got a lot of cool stuff I've already been using.

This meant however, that on actual Christmas Eve I was down here in the Cities, both because I had no desire to go to Brainerd just to attend midnight mass and because special guest Lawrentians Ben and Nora were in town staying at my house with their dog Finn.

My friend Pete, who took me along to New Year's this week, came to hang out early in the evening while his fiance was at work (we watched Chronos, which is surprisingly bad), but when he left I started to feel weird about feeling weird about not celebrating Christmas on the day.

I know I tend to go on about "Yuletide Dan" in December, and my friends seem to enjoy the conceit, but with all my stuff done, I had expected to be able to treat Christmas Eve as just another day.

Instead I ended up having to embrace it. I turned on the lights, and the music, and the Yule Log channel, and stayed up reading until Ben and Nora got back from their Christmastime activities for some quality hanging out. If I ever again hear the 1953 novelty song "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas," it will be too soon.

We'll see how this week goes. It's a nothing, five days of work, no holidays, my first regular week in a while although some of the deadlines at work might make it hectic. I have no resolutions for the new year, more like stuff I could tell myself I didn't have time to do in December and for which I now have no excuse.

As for 2010, it was a mixed bag for me, particularly towards the end. I had fun, biked in the summer, met some cool people, became better friends with others, had campfires in the fall, and even went out of my comfort zone a few times — often with poor results, but I don't regret any of that. My brother got married, nobody died, and I started homebrewing, which will probably be something I'm still doing 20 years from now. More so than in 2009, I figured out how I should live my life in order to be happy, even if I didn't always follow through on that wisdom.

At the same time, 2010 was another year where I was sick in the summer for several weeks (the lesson, in part, is never to convalesce on a couch that's too soft). I also dropped the ball on a lot of things I should have done, and in the last half of the year I developed a nasty tendency to get myself down about stupid people or past business or both, when I should be having fun. Some of my worst days in years were in 2010, which reflects well on how good I have it... but still, I'm glad to see the end of it.

I have so little concept of 2011 though, it's crazy.