Okay, so it’s now a week into 2006 and it’s time for my wrap-up of last year.

2005 started out with a whimper and not a bang. I had spent New Year’s Eve alone in my apartment, and I don’t even think I had bothered watching the festivities on television. In fact, I was probably watching The West Wing or some other thing on DVD. For at least part of the evening, I was speaking to a friend on the phone. I probably went to bed at a pretty reasonble hour.

The beginning of 2005 was not great for me, but it wasn’t entirely horrible, either. I had lost my job in June of 2004 and had started a new one in September. The resulting debts and financial issues weren’t easy to deal with, but I was definitely in a better place in, well, almost every way.

Except the actual place I was in. The apartment I live in is about 50 miles from my place of business, which means that at the height of the gas prices in 2005, I was paying out more then ten dollars a day, just to drive to and from my job. It seems virtually impossible to find decently-priced single-bedroom apartments, though.

In June I got a raise. While it wasn’t as much as I was hoping, a raise is a raise, and it was welcomed. I was still recovering from the unemployment thing the year prior, though.

Then, in July, I lost someone I thought was a very good friend. That hurt, especially because I had really done nothing except try to be a good friend, and it ended up getting me burned. That event has kind of weighed on me since then, and it’s rather depressing.

I try not to let it get me too down, though. I’m trying to keep things positive, and for the most part I’ve done pretty well with that. Things are fairly stable and steady, if quite a bit boring. Work was crazy for a little while, as I’ve mentioned previously, but it paid off in the end and things are back to normal now.

The year ended, though, with quite a bit more bang than it had the year before. I was with friends and while it wasn’t anything crazy, it was fun and not nearly as lonely as New Year’s 2005.

And I’d say that was a fitting close to a year that was, start to finish, represented quite adequately by its beginning and end.