Anyway, I contact Erik, and last week my parents and I went to the New York Times Building to be interviewed by Erik and photographed, along with my Playbill. A few months ago I watched Page One: Inside the New York Times, much of which takes place in the offices of the Times, so it was so cool to be able to visit in person. (Plus, I’m a New York Times junkie).

It was after 6 p.m. when we were there, so hardly anyone was around. While Erik interviewed my parents separately, I wandered around and saw the cubicles of Ben Brantley, Charles Isherwood, Patrick Healy, and Stephen Holden. I didn’t touch anything, of course. I just looked.

And now, the story is up, along with audio and photos of us. (We’re the second and third entries.) God, those are such nerdy photos of me. I should have adjusted my glasses and gotten a haircut and what the hell is that dot on my chin where I’m standing with my parents? Oh, well.

I’m kind of surprised this blog is still going. But I like having it.

It had been building up for a while. I had mentioned several times over the last few years that I was not satisfied with my progress. After my birthday and the new year, something clicked in me, and I decided it was time to think about moving on.

Last week, I told her that I was going to be meeting with a new therapist, but that I hadn’t decided yet what I was going to choose to do. She reacted a bit snidely: she said it was kind of like having an affair, like trying to escape the hard work involved in a relationship by looking elsewhere. I felt really surprised and insulted by that. I was not acting on a whim; I had worked hard in my therapy; I had been incredibly patient. Maybe too patient.

Her defensiveness only helped convince me that it was time to move on.

My new therapist is a gay man, which I hope will give me a fresh perspective on things. He’s also more oriented toward the here and now, as opposed to my old therapist, who was much more Freudian and interested in my past, my dreams, and so on.

About 20 minutes into my first session with the new therapist, he said to me, “You seem like someone who thinks a lot about things.” I had brought with me a short list of what I consider to be my main issues in life, and at the very top, I had written: “Overthinker.” Bingo! He got me.

He also asked me a question about something at one point, and as I answered it, I started to ramble. I’m very good at free associating; it’s a bad habit of mine. But as I began to yammer on, he stopped me and said I wasn’t really answering the question. In other words, he corralled me back in. My old therapist would never have done that; she would have just let me ramble on. It was refreshing to be interrupted, to be called out on my bad habits.

After meeting with the new therapist twice, I decided not to prolong it and to just take the plunge and quit my old therapist.

She was a bit pissy last night when I told her I was ending my therapy. I had only been talking for about 15 seconds when she took a blank sheet of paper from her stack of blank sheets and start writing up my final bill. I stopped talking and said, “What are you doing?” And she said, “I’m writing up your final bill.” So I looked at her and said, very firmly: “But I’m talking to you.”

I don’t know if I would have been able to be so assertive a few years ago. Maybe I would have; I don’t know.

She stopped writing and put down the piece of paper, and then we had an honest conversation about my decision.

It feels incredibly freeing to have quit. It was one relationship in my life that I had never really considered ending, because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to survive without her and that I would miss her. Now that I’ve done it, it feels great. I will be able to survive without her.

It feels — like I said — freeing.

The thing is, there are various vectors on the cook-vs.-takeout scale. Cooking is cheaper — unless you’re making a very complicated recipe that requires lots of ingredients, in which case it might be more expensive. Cooking is healthier — except that for dinner tonight I’ve ordered a vegetarian burrito with brown rice and a side salad, a meal that will contain more vegetables than what I might have cooked. Cooking is more enjoyable — sometimes. I like cooking, but only when I’m actually doing it — caught up in the slicing and the doing. If I think about getting ready to cook, including going to buy the ingredients I don’t have, it’s a pain in the ass.

I guess I have to decide why I want to cook more: because it’s healthier (sometimes). Because it’s cheaper (sometimes). Because I like the process of cooking (sometimes). Because I want to know what goes in my food (always).

Ah well — at least I cooked on Saturday night. Resolutions can be gradual!

Pundits like to pontificate, and so do the rest of us. But really, there’s no way to predict what the 2012 election will be like, what the big stories will be, and what will ultimately happen.

It amazes me that pundits never talk about the effect of a running mate until summertime, when the running mate actually gets picked. It’s like collective winter/spring amnesia. The biggest game-changer in the 2008 election — other than the economic collapse less than two months before Election Day — was John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate. That didn’t happen until the end of August, and it had an enormous effect on the race (though maybe not on the actual result), giving the GOP ticket a huge injection of enthusiasm. Palin seemed to dominate political news coverage for the next two months.

If things go like they always do, Romney won’t pick his running mate for another eight months. When he picks that running mate, it will change the story one way or another. So maybe we should all stop speculating about what this election will be like until that happens.

Every year since 1988 has had a digit that appeared at least twice:

1988: multiple 8s
1989-1999: multiple 9s
2000-2010: multiple 0s
2011: multiple 1s
2012: multiple 2s

Next year, 2013, will finally break this pattern.

I was trying to figure out the previous record for a sequence of numbers with repeating digits. I think it was 1099 to 1202. Before that, 988 to 1022.

Meaningless trivia, but I still think it’s cool. Numbers are fun.

My reading is very important to me, because I love to learn. The difference this past year was that I got a Kindle in late 2010, so I was able to read big, thick books on my long work commute, and I was able to sample books I might not have tried in the past — hence, more fiction and self-help than usual.

That said, I’ve decided to make some of my reading from the past year private. I have tended not to disclose as much of my personal life on my blog as I used to, and some of the books I read this year were self-help books that I’d rather keep to myself. So… in chronological order, here are most of the books I read in 2011:

[private]

[private]

Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace (started in late 2010, finished in 2011)

The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787, Gordon S. Wood

The Tragedy of Arthur, Arthur Phillips

Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy: A Practitioner’s Guide, Nancy McWilliams

The Story of Britain: From the Romans to the Present: A Narrative History, Rebecca Fraser

Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947, Christopher Clark

The Help, Kathryn Stockett

[private]

The Walls of Jericho: Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Russell, and the Struggle for Civil Rights, Robert Mann

Watching TV: Six Decades of American Television, Harry Castleman and Walter J. Podrazik

If the Buddha Got Stuck: A Handbook for Change on a Spiritual Path, Charlotte Kasl

When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, Pema Chödrön

Thoughts Without a Thinker: Psychotherapy From A Buddhist Perspective, Mark Epstein

11/22/63, Stephen King

Turning the Mind Into an Ally, Sakyong Mipham

[private]

The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes

The Stranger’s Child, Alan Hollinghurst

A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War, Amanda Foreman (started a couple of weeks ago)

Happy New Year.

In order, I saw:

• the Annual Christmas Tree and Neapolitan Baroque Crèche
• Lisbon’s Hebrew Bible
• Victorian Electrotypes: Old Treasures, New Technology
• Art in Renaissance Venice, 1400–1515: Paintings and Drawings from the Museum’s Collections
• lunch in the cafeteria (OK, didn’t see this, I ate this)
• Duncan Phyfe: Master Cabinetmaker in New York
• English furniture, rooms, decorative arts, etc. (probably my favorite part of this visit, because I’ve been very much interested in British history lately)
• The American Wing
• Infinite Jest: Caricature and Satire from Leonardo to Levine
• The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini (just opened last week; very crowded!)
• Photographic Treasures from the Collection of Alfred Stieglitz
• Stieglitz and His Artists: Matisse to O’Keeffe
• and finally, the Met’s newest high-profile permanent exhibition, the New Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia, the highlight of which is the Damascus Room, a formal Islamic reception room that has been transported to the Met.

I also stopped along the way at one of my favorite paintings at the Met: The Storm, by Pierre-Auguste Cot.

It was a really nice afternoon. Visiting the Met is like traveling around the world, and through history. I adore it. I’m glad I live in the city that has the Met.

I’m not sure I like birthdays anymore. They’re just a reminder that I’m getting older. It’s silly, really, because I’m only one day older than I was yesterday, and the only reason I celebrate today is because the Earth is in the same place relative to the Sun as it was on the day I was born. But still.

Last year when I turned 37 I felt this *click* as I transitioned from my mid-30s to my late 30s. Last year I suddenly saw 40 on the horizon. I then realized I still had three years to go before I turned 40. So this birthday doesn’t feel as troubling as my last birthday because I’ve also resigned myself to the fact that 40 is approaching in a couple of years.

I don’t really know how to act my age anymore, and I haven’t for a few years. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing. I’m not in my 20s. But I’m not middle-aged, either. I don’t like getting drunk or staying out late like I used to. On the other hand, I still want to have a life, and I don’t really feel like I do. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life not doing anything new and not challenging myself.

Most people my age are straight and married with a couple of kids in elementary school or middle school or even high school. If I were straight I’d be a dad. But I’m not. So I never really know what I’m supposed to be doing.

I’m not young but I’m not old. It’s weird.

Christmas is weird, because in many ways it’s not a religious holiday. Christmas trees, candy canes, Santa Claus — what does any of that have to do with Jesus Christ or the Middle East? I kind of wish the holiday would go full-on secular so that I could celebrate it.

Oh, well. We’re about to head out for some Chinese food. Which I guess is close enough to celebrating Christmas for this Jew.