Still on the subject of two-thousand-o-six, the year — what about me? Looking back, 2006 didn't amount to much. O-Five was a rather shitty year at a personal level, but with a warm and hopeful finale. By the end of December, I was rolling in high gear, baby. Then came O-Six and everything slowed down. It wasn't terrible, but not much interesting either.

On a professional level, I kept on with my teaching and failed my personal resolution of doing one 'no-budget' short film every two months on average. I did release three short movies (one being Bad Day which was shot back in mid-2005, and not very good), and then shot another one, then codenamed Gloria (the final title will actually be Invisible Women), which was meant to be a simple affair but has proven to be the most challenging edit of my young career and consequentely I forbid myself from starting work on other stuff until I finish it. Parallel to this, I believe a script I wrote called Celestial Kingdom is by far my finest work yet and does deserves the existence of a Budget, so I'm seeking ways to finance it. I've also got an opening concerning documentary filmmaking, I'll see how it works out in 2007.

Personally, O-Six has been... 'mellow' is the word to describe it. Again, I haven't traveled much, besides short one or two-day trips Somewhere to do Something and then return back to Porto (I can't bear the terms 'business trips'). Had some good moments with friends, and a few annoying moments. I had the most fun organizing a good premiere party for Bad Day, and found out I actually enjoy having to meet new people, fighting my noxious introversion in the process. And I did spend 2006 thinking a lot about my Deepest Particularities of Being (that is, those stupid neuroses) which more than often are my greatest opponent in things such as relationships with the opposite sex or the ability to hype my own work. Quite often demoralizing, but at times good for learning how to hack myself and circumvent my demons.

Still, a blog is no place for self-pity. And what self-pity? The world is going to be blown-up to pieces eventually (and then the Sun goes supernova anyway), Nature is randomly cruel, and there are seven billion other human beings defending their own interests, so what choice do individuals really have? The only answer is, a choice of perspective.

For two-thousand-o-seven, I choose Optimism. Despite all the uglyness.···