2006: Year in Review
Once again it’s time to be deeply introspective, an about-face from this blog’s usual navel-gazing flavor.
I’m a bit intimidated by 2005, both the year itself and last year’s YiR. At the beginning of 2005, I declared it a “Year of Transition and Transformation,” and indeed it was.
From last year’s retrospective:
It’s a little odd, though, that both last year and the year before I’ve made Major Life Changes™ near the end of the year. It’s probably just coincidence, but who knows where I’ll find myself in November 2006? A convent? Jail? Canada?
For all that excitement, November 2006 found me in almost the exact same place January had left me. I can’t think of a Major Life Change that’s happened in the last couple months, or even in the last year.
Now, instead of me rambling on about how nothing much has happened, let’s just get into the details. To set the scene: I’m tutoring, teaching, and working in the office. I’ve been out of school for a year (modulo a tepid “transient” semester at HBU). I live alone in an apartment in town.
January: I enroll in my first semester at UH, as a Classical Studies major. My schedule is a hodgepodge of courses that sound interesting and/or like something I might someday major in. I get a new laptop.* I switch to Gmail. Sam is beset by Giardia and poops on the floor a lot.
February: I’m still feeling a little bummed out sometimes. And sometimes not. I get contacts. I resolve not to eat fast food for thirty days, Chick-n-Minis and Starbucks chocolate cupcakes excepted. This lasts an astonishing 22 days, give or take.
March: I eat a lot of chocolate cupcakes. I move to a new apartment, further from town but the same distance from school. Spring break. A good friendship suddenly goes all to shit. After (but not because of) several weeks of extra hours and shifting job responsibilities, I quit my office job to focus on school.
April: I teach a lot, both SAT and LSAT. MIT steals the CalTech cannon. I perform in a community choir, despite being literally unable to sing, due to laryngitis. I finally buy myself an iPod. I stumble across a little site called YouTube and immediately join up.
May: I post my first video. My HMC class graduates, and I vaguely regret not attending. The Great Flea Infestation of 2006 begins.
June: Summer term. I make it to my 8:00 class a grand total of three times. I smash my cell phone with my ass. I watch the second-most, most, and third-most boring films I’ve ever seen, all in one mind-numbing evening.
July: My mom and I visit family in the Netherlands for 2.5 weeks and have a superfantastic time. I take several hours of video footage, most of which remains unedited. I get the best haircut of my life for free at a concert. I turn 22.
August: I spend the rest of my summer vacation tutoring, teaching, and lounging about. Fall semester begins, and I’m not particularly excited about it. I go to the gym, the only time I will do so all year.
September: School gets off to a rocky start, as my moods continue to swing. Once again I am rather busy with school and work. I spend a good chunk of my time making and watching YouTube videos and cut down on blog- and news-reading to compensate. Blogger SAT Challenge. I stop teaching LSAT courses.
October: Nothing of note happens. I continue to have trouble finishing lab reports.
November: NaBloPoMo. I come up with about five good post ideas the whole month; the rest is absolute drivel. Nutcracker Market, which my camera silently boycotts. ArtCrawl. My schoolwork begins to improve. A routine vet visit for Sam reveals a heartworm infestation. Larry the Lump makes his appearance.
December: Fall semester ends well. A video to which I’ve made a video response gets featured, leading to my video suddenly getting 10,000 views and 230 comments, mostly from haters. Seven visits to four doctors. MRI. CT. FNA. More shots and bed-rest for Sammy. I split my time between worrying and being calm and happy, depending on which doctor I’ve seen most recently. I spend the holidays at home with my family. One of my most poorly-made video clips appears on CNN for about five seconds. New Year’s Eve at the beach, again.
The year seems to lack an overarching theme. It was supposed to be a year for “Settling In and Taking Control.” The settling in I certainly managed—I’ve gotten rather comfy—but taking control? I might have a smidge more control over my life than I did a year ago, but I certainly haven’t made a concerted effort.
I’m solidly in school now and making mostly A’s, which is a huge improvement. I thought by the end of this year I’d know what I wanted to major in and have some sort of degree plan, but…not so much. I should get on that. Plans beyond college? Ha, no idea. I’m also still obsessed with/horrified by death; I blog about it less because there’s not much new to say, but I think about it every damn day. The world, with its unfathomability, continues to blow my fucking mind.
One upward trend of 2006, in the last few months at least, is my increased ability to control my diet. I still have good days and bad days, but overall I find myself disgusted by french fries and brownies more often than I crave them. Let’s hope this trend continues into the new year.
Probably the most positive development of 2006 has been my involvement with YouTube. I’ve been at it for eight months, during which time I’ve posted 42 videos and accumulated 112 subscribers. Not only have I “met” and conversed with dozens of people from all around the world and many different backgrounds, but I’ve also gotten to know many of them, to the point that I feel closer to a few of my YT pals than I do to some of my real-life friends. It’s a bit like the community I left behind at Xanga, but drawn from a much more diverse slice of humanity, and of course with video and all the extra information that medium can convey.
[I’ve deleted a couple probably-uninteresting-to-you paragraphs here; it will suffice to say that I’m a YT evangelist. Perhaps I’ll make a separate post later…or maybe I’ll just make a video.]
Also, if it weren’t for YouTube, I almost certainly would not have bought a camcorder, and I would not have been able to take hours of footage of our summer vacation. I’ll finish that editing project sometime, really I will—I figure there’s about twenty videos’ worth of material left.
Okay, that’s it. I’ll declare 2006 the Year of the ‘Tube. I know I should be getting more excited about school and work and things that “really” matter than some website that takes up hours of my day with no tangible product. It probably seems silly to the non-Youtubians*** among you, but this community has become an important part of my life, damnit. Sure, laugh. My high-tech pen-pals and I will get along just fine without you. Oh, and we’ll be taking over the world soon, so watch out for that.
Phew! Now I remember why I was putting this post off—it takes FOREVER.** Whenever I read through my old stuff I think, “Damn, I used to be funny. What happened?” Maybe I only think my recent posts are dreck because I still remember writing those sentences and am not surprised by them. Yeah, that sounds good. Anyway, I’ll leave you with a few local highlights of 2006.
- Why everyone should learn a second language
- A whole new world
- Suddenly and with malice!
- Answer: 11 hours
- Audience participation day!
- The next person to say ‘dildo’ gets a punch in the face
- Introducing: The Hamper Metric
- Proposition
- All kinds of crazy
- Truthiness
———
* My project for today? Clean out my old desktop, which has been sitting around unused for a year, to give to my parents.
** Ten or twelve hours so far, over the last three days. There are so many more-useful things I could’ve done with my time, but I needed to get this out of the way before school starts.
*** Youtubia is a kingdom, didn’t you know?
P.S. Here’s 2004’s Review, for completeness’ sake.
Tags: blogging, Larry the Lump, Sam, school, teaching, YouTube