Going Going Gone ... reflections on 2014

So here we are in 2015 already, and once again I’m running a little late. Where every other self-respecting music blog on the planet has long since signed off 2014 with some sort of “best of” list, everythingsgonegreen has once again been found wanting.

Not so much on purpose or anything quite as strategic as that. I guess I just decided the short break from my day job also signalled the chance to step back from discretionary night job stuff like writing blog-posts. I just decided to do nothing for a fortnight, and besides, there was cricket to be had.

And there was other stuff involving food, and drink. Lots of drink. And it’s been hot, which makes you thirsty. So you drink more. And before you know it, you’re face down on the carpet doing slug impersonations, humiliating yourself in front of visitors on a daily basis.

 

exiting the Eighties, zombie-fied NYE 2014

And NOTHING gets done.

Am I right? …

Oh. Just me then.

All carpet surfing aside, it’s not as though I haven’t been using the time constructively. I’ve been thinking about that annual list thing. It’ll be the usual everythingsgonegreen effort (or lack thereof) – not so much a “best of 2014” album list but an offering of those “most played in my house” during 2014. You know the drill.

But I think that post is a few days away yet and I’m back here temporarily only to make promises, and to do that thing I do when I just want to keep the blog ticking over – to post something about nothing and everything.

Getting reacquainted with the shagpile also had me reflecting on a whole lot of other 2014-related shenanigans. A year tinged with so much irony I just gave up and rolled over to it by the end (possibly quite literally – kissing those woolly strands).

The year I didn’t resolve to stop smoking proved to be the year I finally did. The year I decided to embrace healthier lifestyle choices found me visiting Wellington hospital more times than I had in the previous twenty years. For a variety of reasons. Most tragically on one occasion, when I visited only to say goodbye to a good friend just before they turned his life support off … R.I.P. Ciaran aka ‘El Presidente’.

There was a load of other depressing and sad stuff too, some family illness, but hey, let’s not do that here. There was overseas travel and at one point, my first ever exposure to a luxury remote island resort. Actually, given that I worked in hospitality for the best part of a decade, that’s perhaps a sorry admission in itself.

There were some writing-related highs: I got paid to write, and my Audioculture piece on Wellington nightclubs in the 80s was that popular site’s most read contribution of the year (!), clocking up over 5,000 hits within 12 hours of being published.

From a personal perspective, that’s going to be hard to top in 2015.

And there was the NZ Musician thing – seeing my work in glossy print, and getting the chance to chat with a few seriously talented local heroes.

If not reward for perseverance over style, then at the very least the chance to finally put those years of drinking in dark smelly clubs to some semblance of reasonable use.

So goodbye 2014, and a happy New Year to you, patient blog reader, I’ll be right back with that album list just as soon as I pick myself up off the floor …