2008 Redux

The goal for this year was, of course, to go back over the previous years and work on all the resolutions I never managed to complete.  Here is the annotated list:

1. Go back to Australia… even if I have to sell my blood to do it
   I did it!  From July 17 to August 6 I went back to Oz to visit some old friends!  I had many good times, but I missed my friend Elle, my friend Adriano, and had to miss a philosophy of biology conference in order to do it.  Still: Done and well worth it.
2. Read my weight in books
   Do articles count?  Because otherwise I failed at this one miserably.  I’ll modify it and try again in 2009.
3. Go to at least one concert, one roadtrip, one vacation, one date, move twice, and talk to at least three strangers
   I went to the Magnetic Fields on October 12 with my friends Adelay, Heather, and Russ!
   I drove to Seattle, back to New Mexico, to North Carolina, to DC a few times, and just finished a tour of Pennsylvania!
   I vacationed in Mexico for six weeks and Australia for three!  (Guess which one was much, much cheaper?  Even discounting airfare, too.)
   I went on 1.5 dates with girls I never saw again!  Then, I possibly kissed 3 girls in unrelated events (not in a row, obviously).
   I moved to Seattle in February, back to New Mexico in March, and to North Carolina in August!
   I talk to strangers regularly!  Only I call them my friends.  Also, I don’t really understand why this was ever a resolution.  Maybe I meant something hidden by it back in the day, I don’t remember.
4. Finish the Great American Novel
   Still working on it.  But now I have both ideas and inspiration.  No time, though.
5. Save someone’s life
   I prevented someone from being born, punched a fat person (but didn’t press too many charges), and did an “It’s a Wonderful Life“-style thing for someone.  I also gave great advice and was a pretty good friend to some people.  All told: I’m okay with not doing this one.
6. Buy furniture, even if it’s just a bean bag
   I sleep in a $1000 bed every night.  It is so comfortable!
7. Memorize five more poems, pi, or learn the nations of the world
   I’ll do this later?
8. Paint/fix my car
   I worked on fixing my car and added some minute bits of paint to it.  Sum total: I’ll probably never make it pristine until I try to sell it later.
9. Make a new true friend, but be a good friend to all the old
   Sort of success.  I told someone they were my friend for the year and they called me a serial killer.  Which is one of the nicer things people have said to me, considering.  And I still love all my friends from the past, even if it is very hard to talk to them with any regularity!
10. Probably something having to do with women… or cantaloupe
    Frankly, that sounds kind of gross now that I think back on it.  But everyone loves Pixel for some reason and Pixel feels an odd sense of confidence now, so he wins.  Yey!
11. Produce a comic… or at least paint something
    I did!  I made a bunch!  As soon as I have time and patience and contentment with a job well done, I will make them all fabulous and put them up online.
12. Buff out
    Nope, but then again, I JUST got my bike and gym membership, so… since they were a big part of my original plan, I predict success pretty soon.
13. Get a job
    I tutored in Maths for a while back in March, and it was fun!  But then resolution 14 got in the way and I had to quit.
14. Be a grad student
    This was scary for a little while……  But I DID IT!
15. Sell my car / buy a new one
    I like my car!  I’m hoping it lasts another 120,000 miles!
16. Help my cousin emigrate
    I tried, believe me.  But bureaucracy needs time, you know?  Still: it would have been so complicated for a few months were she here.
17. Write 100 works of necroautobiographical microfiction
    I wrote 4.  But I got a cool program that might help me.
18. _______________ Audience may fill in the blank here.
    You never did!

So I accomplished 12 out of 18.  Of the rest, I still want to do 4.  So I accomplished two thirds of my goals and only still care about two thirds of the rest!

I’d call this year a success.  At least on paper.  How did you do?

Last Year: 2007 Redux
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2008 Off Paper

At the end of the year, I usually write a post in which I go over the previous year’s resolutions and compare whether I’ve achieved them or not.

Back in 2005, I wrote a post I still think about called “remember when…” in which I recalled the mini-adventures that may or may not have made it onto the blog, but still reminded me of very cool events.

I repeated it in 2006, because that also seemed like another chapter of my life being closed (though, when I get my actual memoirs published, it’ll end with a dinosaur fight rather than a blog post).  I didn’t do it at all in 2007, because all it felt like I did that year was try to get 150 hugs.  I succeeded, but at what cost?  Indeed, I ended up calling this year 2007 pt. 2 because I felt like I hadn’t accomplished anything worth writing in the previous year.

So…  here’s 2008 as I remember it. I’ve also included 2007, but that could really just be summed up as work, travel, hugs, visits, and grad school apps.

• Applications to grad school and the bitter torture of waiting.
• The first death of a friend I’ve had to deal with in my adult life.
• I had blue hair.
• Sadly, people I wanted to respect me got to see it.
• Anson looked like Trotsky.
• I kissed three people I should not have and not a single person I should have. 
• I was punched.  In the FACE.  By a fat man.  Sadly, this was still not one of the top three worst days of 2008.
• I had the absolute worst 12-hour period in my life.   I would not wish that day on my worst enemy…. And, because of promises and such, I can never say why to anyone.  Ever.
• I got into Fucking DUKE!
• I moved in with an old, rich lady with very large dogs that would always bark when I came home.
• … and she sort of fell in love with me.
• Skype chats
• E-mail exchanges
• Three months of vacation
• A week away in an awesome mansion
• Visiting T-Rob.
• Living alone
• Going out drinking on weekends with a few good buds.
• Driving, ugh.
• Helping far too many people move.
• Getting to see people that truly matter.
• Meeting all the other fabulous people here.
• Getting involved in USP.
• The three-day campout for basketball tickets.
• Dancing.
• Far too many people falling for me.  *sigh*
• Thursday foodin’
• “Spot the Logical Fallacy” parties
• “Buzzword Bingo”
• Helping the blind
• Hurting the deaf
• Tutoring in maths
• Applying to graduate school and feeling miserable doing it.
• Trying to collect hugs.
• Visiting everyone I cared about, worried it would be the last time I’d see any of them.
• Being right about one of them.
• B-ball games
• Drinking coffee just to see a cute girl
• Work ponchos
• Reassessing life again and again
• Being funny again, being creative again, but being unable to dedicate time to it.
• Snowboarding
• Finals
• The scariest presentations of my friggin’ life.
• Finding out I was an introvert in situations where I’m afraid I’ll look foolish.
• Bad sweater parties
• Moving away without telling people: multiple times
• NaNoWriMo, oh no!
• NaBloPoMo times so many months.
• Twitter!
• Visiting exes
• Going camping
• Getting a GPS
• Losing moneys and material goods and not caring
• Magnetic fields
• Tightrope walking with people’s emotions

…  I’m forgetting a thousand things.

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I’m in your blog, upping your postcount

‘Tis I, once more, that loveable rascal who hijacks the blog of a friend who’s on the other side of the world (in other words, unable to stop me in doing so) for my own malicious purposes.

Well, not ‘malicious’, more mischevious.

Previously I did so under guise of community spirit (wishing to make this blog accomplish the ‘one post a day for a month’ thing in November), but now it’s just out of my own selfish drives.

You see children, I have a goal in life. It’s nothing to do with money, fame or success, it is a single, simple goal. I wish to start a ‘thing’. You know what I’m talking about, a ‘thing’. Just something everyone has heard about through people. It will be my ‘thing’, and so I will be able to, looking back on my youth in my grand old days of 40+, be able to say “I started that.”

However, starting a ‘thing’ ain’t easy. And so I decided I needed to follow the Monkey-typewriter theory. I tried getting ‘Champion Effort’ used as a saying (a small group of people I know have taken this up), I even attempted to get ‘STATION!’ (from Bill and Ted 2) adopted. But now I believe I have my ‘thing’, and so I must stretch it out.

Some of you may have heard of this being used before, but now I wish to stretch it out into the general community. Ladies and gentlemen:

I wish to turn -gasm into a suffix. As I explain on my blog (linked somewhere. Nerdgasm-unlimited), there are no limits to the number of -gasms that can be created. And it doesn’t need sexual connotations, it just needs to refer to enormous enjoyment. So, I request, nay, DEMAND you undertake this most important of quests. Ladies and gents, you are to spread the -gasm. Here are some examples.

Nerdgasm (enormous enjoyment from nerdy things)

Horgasm (enormous enjoyment you pay for)

Monogasm (enormous enjoyment by yourself)

Shaudenfraugasm (enormous enjoyment at someone else’s bad fortune)

Teargasm (enormous enjoyment and sadness at something at the same time)

Alcogasm (enormous enjoyment at a particular alcoholic drink)

Friendgasm (regular enormous enjoyment in the company of a particular individual)

And so, your quest begins. Spread the -gasm. Let this be a ‘thing’ that rivals even the GAME* in it’s awesomeness.

 * You just lost it

Last Year: Would you tell your friend if you didn't like his/her partner?
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Some solutions to the budget deficit

1. Raise taxes to crippling levels
2. Cut spending to destitute levels
3. Legalize drugs/gay marriage/slavery/super porn/the hunting of humans and tax it
4. Sell Alaska back to Russia for 50x what we bought it for
5. Declare war on China, acquire them, and forgive our debt
6. Bring the manufacturing industry back to America by hook (but also by crook)
7. Ponzi scheme
8. Sell off various political positions
9. Move everyone overnight to Mexico
10. Have a really, really big bake sale

Last Year: I'm really famous on TV: haven't you ever seen America's Most Wanted?
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Year’s End, a Review

When I started grad school, Angelaboration made up a list of some 50 or so resolutions. I liked a few, so I stole them. I’m going to see how I did now. Care to join?

Try not to make the fact that I’m a blogger public knowledge.

Meh, didn’t really come up.

Take studying SERIOUSLY.

Nope. I worried about it seriously, but this did not translate to productivity. I’ll try again next year.

Actually read all of the assigned reading. Don’t just skim it. Occasionally take notes.

HA HA HA ha ha ha ha ha.

Remember to step back and take time to breathe.

Breathing is overrated.  Panic?  That’s where it’s at.. and that’s where I was at all semester.  Probably for no good reason.

Get fit.

Not yet.  In fact, I’m worse off now.  My eating is completely irregular.

Finish homework, papers, reading assignments, etc. as quickly and efficiently as possible.

I don’t know what this means anymore.  This seems like nonsense to me now.

Make friends outside of the program.

I’ve got a couple, yeah.  But my best bud(s) seem to be in the program.  Either way: I’m happy.

Write down all homework assignments.

Homework?

Take all available opportunities to learn new skills.

I’ve lost all my goals for skillz.  What I want now is to write a novel and learn French.  Also: learn that thing I’m supposed to be studying.

Remember how hard it is to get to grad school. Remember how great of a program this is. Be grateful every, every minute.

I’m grateful.  Yeah, I am.  It’s scary as shit being in a prestigious program, but whenever I’m not clenching my butt, I smile at how awesome this all is.

Don’t let politics within the school get personal. Just because something is going on in class, doesn’t mean it has to carry over into the rest of life.

It seems like drama is a bigger problem for me now than politics.  Why does everyone seem to love Pixel?

Go out and have fun.

Yeah, I do.

Take a trip to somewhere outside of town (even if it’s just to the next closest city), don’t give up my own projects.

Three times.  And oh, man I gave up on everything throughout the semester, but I’m feeling really productive now.

Work on completing my novel in my spare time.

Now is my spare time and now I am working on it.

Do not add to negativity, politics, nor take part in gossip.

I am the gossip and I’m okay with it.  I just need to get a girlfriend or become gay or something, because otherwise I’ll keep being the gossip and it’ll stop being okay.

Budget properly. If having trouble, begin writing down all expenditures.

I was okay until this month.  Hopefully I make it to the 31 without busting into my savings.

Laugh as much as possible.

Yeah, I’ve got my humor back.  And I love it.

Do not discuss individuals from grad school program on my blog, in case they find it.
There were a few vague allusions and one almost direct reference. But naw, nothing like the last time I got in trouble.

Feel like I belong. It’s not a competition, and even if it was, it doesn’t matter if you win.
I… I feel like I belong a whole lot more now. When I’m in class, I still clam up (which is rare for me, trust me), but hopefully that’ll get better next semester. And now, when I’m outside of class, I very rarely feel like I don’t belong. Is good.

Walk or bike to school.
I tried that, but I didn’t have a bike. Then, when I did: it was cold and I was sick. Walking just sucked. I did that for a while, but jeez. After daylight saving’s time ended it was too dark to walk home.

Try to limit caffeine intake.
Ha! I started intaking MORE caffeine. Mostly cuz there’s a really cute girl that works in a coffee shop here and I like going by to say hi.

Watch my nutrition
Nope! Not even a little. I tried to get cooking and be good at vitamin taking, but time just keeps on slipping by, you know? *sigh*

Total: 9 to 12.  I’m going to make new resolutions for 2009 and post them.  I’ll also post my new plan for grad school.  Cuz what I did this semester did not really work.

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