2008: The Year of Chaos?

No, the Awakening isn't coming three years early, I just thought I'd blog about all the stuff going on for me this year.  After almost ten years of having the exact same routine, this year could be one of the craziest I've ever had.  What's coming up for me this year?

Well, in roughly chronological order:

• When the end of March rolls around, I'm flying out to Scottsdale for a surgical consultation with Toby Meltzer.  I've been waiting for this for...longer than I care to think and now it's getting closer and closer.  I'm still not entirely sure it feels "real" to me yet.  My dad's going with me, and we're planning to see a Cubs game during spring training while we're there.
• Operation Get The Hell Outta Here.  It's been 27 years since I first moved back here to the land of corn and soybeans with my parents, and really, I want to try living somewhere else and hopefully doing something closer to what I really want to do for a living.  I love my parents, and I'll always look back upon this place fondly, but I really need a change of pace for a huge variety of reasons, but especially for my mental health.  Not quite sure when that will happen this year, but I really hope it does.
  
• GenCon Indy 2008.  Wasn't sure I was going to go GenCon this year, because of everything else going on, but now I think by August I'm going to need the break, and now that I'm actually doing some writing and looking for a new job in the gaming industry, I suspect GenCon will be a great place to do some networking.  Plus, I'll get to see the NSDM folks again, as well as some people from Eve and RPGnet who I haven't met before.
• Presumably, soon after GenCon, I'll be flying out to Arizona to actually have surgery.  Keeping my fingers crossed about this, at least.

I guess it's not that many things, but the magnitude of the tasks ahead, and everything they entail (like moving, selling the house, switching jobs, etc) makes the year ahead look like the summit of Everest reaching out above my head.  I'm thinking about grabbing a new laptop this year, because my six year old Dell is kind of creaking along, and I'd like to do writing (and blogging specifically) while I'm doing some of this, and carrying around a twenty pound lump of lead with 5 minutes of battery life isn't really condusive to that, but money is going to be tight enough as it is, I suspect.  Perhaps if I get some more writing jobs, that'll pay for the laptop (to do more writing jobs).

Anyway, I know I haven't told a few of you folks about this stuff yet, so....there it is.