The featured photo above (or below if you’ve jumped) has nothing in particular to do with this post. It’s just a snapshot I took a few weeks back at the Japanese Garden in Lithia Springs Park. For a small garden, it’s pretty well-equipped.

As 2010 draws to a close I can’t help but look back on what was a pretty big year for both me and Annette. I departed Boise State and I began my current gig at Southern Oregon University on March 1st. As i close in on the 1-year mark, i can’t say I’ve made great strides in my job, but I’m still walking and talking and taking pictures.

Annette, after one setback after another, garnered an appointment as a research professor at Oregon Health Sciences University. The only downside is her job is in Portland. We remain unsure how this situation will unfold.

Japanese gardens are simply wondrous things. The Japanese Garden in Portland remains one of my all-time favorite places to be. The garden here is much smaller, but it’s expertly crafted to provide continuous pleasure as one meanders along the paths.

Japanese gardens invite metaphorical thinking, which is a good thing as a year draws to a close. I think how i began this year in another state (both of place and mind), in a home i owned, in a city that was nearly effortless to live in. The reasons i needed to get away are completely gone. It’s like they evaporated shortly after i accepted the job offer. Maybe that’s healthy, why keep reasons to leave a place in one’s head once the commitment to leave is made.

What about 2011? No idea, really. I know that i want to spend more time near the pacific in 2011. I know i want to seriously investigate some new ways of living in 2011. The whole notion of “home ownership” has become unpalatable. Permanence becomes a wisp of smoke while the freedom of not needing to build some kind of legacy to pass on after i’m gone becomes more and more solid.

What might 2011 be about? Being happier while owning even less than we do today, spending more time in silence, devoting more time to working with students on projects involving online communications, internet justice and neutrality, eating even better than we do now, but eating less, too, listening to more music, spending more time near the ocean. Taking more photographs. Producing more and consuming less.