I'll give in to the easy cliché: it is the end of an era. This Austin moment started out as a projected 3 or 4 year excursion. That was a full 9 years ago. Back before South Congress was SoCo, back when you could pass George Bush in the hallway at the capitol without fanfare, when it still seemed as if AMOA would actually build that downtown facility after all.

I've moved from state to state before, and my typical pattern has been to make a clean break, to turn my back completely on what was in order to embrace what will be, to take nothing with me. That won't be the case this time.

This time, I'll take all the live music performances at Café Mundi, Flipnotics, and Ruta Maya with me. I'll take Gallery Lombardi, Art Palace, Fresh Up Club, and Diverse Arts. I'll take Andrew Baron's onstage meltdown in Century Plant, which was the most beautiful artwork I'd ever seen. I'll take Babe's, El sol y la luna, the Guadalupe River, and Thinkwell and PRO-ED, too. I'll take Pat Falconer and Noel Robbins, the Encuentro and the third floor of Book People. Austin was where I really learned to drink beer. And where I finally learned not to take life too seriously. And where I learned about health, and the fact that the only rules that matter are the ones you make up yourself. I'll take all that with me, too.

And a whole bunch of people. I'll take a whole bunch of people with me. They know who they are.

Merry Christmas.

I haven't started packing yet for a move scheduled for less than a week from now, and yet I find myself driving all over town to finish up personal projects and other personal business. It's official: there are now too many things to do and not enough time to do them!

current music: Joni Mitchell, Court and Spark

We have entered that phase of our program where I've started to have final dinners with people, final nights out, that last beer. Peat and I hung out last night, and into the early morning at that. He decamps for Denver next week, so we had to act quickly.

One thing Peat and I have in common is that we both love artists with slow production timeframes; the artists who develop a single idea over the course of 2 or 3 decades, even when it means not producing for the market for long stretches of time (or ever). Henry Darger comes to mind. And J.R.R. Tolkein, who started working on The Lord of the Rings in 1913 and didn't publish it until the early 50s.

That kind of long view is rare in our career-obsessed art world. It has also become the brand of creativity I aspire to.

While in New York last month, I paid a visit to my old college buddy, Bernard, where he lives with his longtime companion, Carmine in a zillion-dollar Chelsea loft. His sister, Isabel, came over for dinner and the three of us got into a heated discussion over Ryan McGinley.

Nihilism is wearing thin, my friends. The melodrama of winsome, beautiful youths with nothing more pressing in their lives than how best to get their frolic on is boring. And sometimes offensive. I can't stomach any more desperate acts of boredom and leisurely privilege. If tragically hip has a face, this is it.

Bernard objected. "If Ryan McGinley heard you saying this, he would probably say, 'I have no idea what you're talking about; I'm just taking pictures of my friends'." Yeah, that's my point.

I took this picture of Bernard and Isabel. Perhaps a little homage.

Since I've entered the home buying process, I've been obsessed with domestic design: I can already tell I'm going to become one of those people who drives to 6 different stores looking for the perfect doorknob. Anyway, I came across this in my research. I actually like 70s style, but there's just no excuse for these.

The countdown begins to the day when I'm no longer a central Texan and instead fall into that dark heart of the dirty, dirty south: Atlanta, Georgia. I find myself restless. I find myself scrambling with book projects in anticipation of the costs of home ownership. I slyly admit to myself that the vision I had when I left my full-time job back in April has only partly come true. Where are the days and days of uninterrupted time for making art punctuated by only the occasional freelance project? Well, sort of hit and miss. They happen, but not constantly. They are easier to gain and also easier to lose.

What matter though; I'm too busy combing the list of artists recently granted entry into the hallowed halls of the Whitney Museum. It's about time Critical Art Ensemble showed up there. And I like Mark Bradford. I assumed Kenneth Anger was dead, but apparently I've been wrong all these years.

I marvel at the number of collectives and collaborative efforts. It bolsters my secret suspicion that the days of the individual artist-creator are numbered. In the future all creative output will be unrecognizable unless it is collective.

3 weeks. Not so much time, but really so much left to do.

current music: Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life