2012, I Salute You

2012, The Year of 30 Days.  It’s such a cliché, but the older I get (I know, I know…  I’m only 28, but 30 is right around the corner, folks), the more quickly time seems to pass.   I swear I was *just* doing the ‘take a picture every day’ challenge.  Like, yesterday.  How did we go from that to 2013?  Boggles the mind I tell you.  Boggles.

In hindsight, I might have bit off more than I can chew (that's what she said) with this year-long challenge.  I was full steam ahead at the beginning of '12, but that slowly dissipated as we got into the colder months.  (Can I blame it on that?   Being cold?  Yeah, totally.  I was super cold.)

At first I was all, "whee" and then I was all "ugh."

With all of the regular life stuff going on (the life of a social butterfly is quite busy, I’ll have you know), I found it difficult to keep the challenges (and therefore, blog) in focus; eventually, they became more of an afterthought.  "Oh.  I have a blog.  I should write something.  About the challenges I'm doing.  Shit.  What is the challenge I'm supposed to be doing?  Dancing.  Right.  I should be dancing."

Making panties drop.

I was hoping this year would break me of this habit of not always seeing things through: "I'm going to lose 1,000 pounds!  "I'm going to become super-duper fit!"  "I'm going to learn a programming language!"  Etc.  It didn't.  But I did come to accept that that pattern is more of a Human Behavior than a Heather Behavior.  I am not a unique snowflake; I am not alone in the I AM GOING TO DO ALL THE THINGS (and then not do all the things) camp.  That doesn’t make it ok, but I feel better knowing that I am not a crap person simply because things didn't quite work out as planned.  Tomorrow's another day.  Or some shit.  I also realized that I would likely be more successful in achieving my goals if I break them into smaller, more manageable pieces.  Baby steps, people... baby steps.  One small step for man, one achievable goal for Heather.

It also reminded that I can find an excuse for absolutely anything, which I believe I have already written about on here.  I can reason away any old thing that seems hard or not fun.  Go ahead, try me.  Give me a problem and I bet I can find a way to justify your way around it.  ZOMG!  THAT IS MY SUPER POWER!!!  I have the Power of Justification. 

I will save you from the things you don't want to do!

Hm.  Reading over this, it sounds a bit negative.  I’m too lazy to erase it and start over, so let me touch on the highlights, the good stuff.  My favorite challenge of the year was hands-down ‘get rid of something every day’.  Holy moly, was that cathartic as fuck.  I have managed to continue that practice throughout the year – if I bring something new into the house, I get rid of something old, useless or unnecessary (wish I could include my cat in that category).  End the Cycle of Crap.  Rock on. 

My favorite picture of the year:

To infinity and beyond!

My favorite art project of the year:

An obvious choice, I know.

My favorite first day of a new month:

Meat!  I can eat meat again!
Yeah, get it in there.  Get that meat in there.

Party in my mouth.

Equal parts frustrating (as fuck) and funny, the ‘no swearing’ challenge surprised me with its obscene difficultly.  I truly believed I would sail through that month like a rockstar, with nary a swear word in site.  Silly Heather.  Silly, silly Heather.

Overall, I'm not sure how I feel about this experiment of mine.  Part of me feels like I could have done it “better”.  Whatever that means.  Some months I feel like I was going through the motions (no TV) and others I completely gave up on (meditation?  Bite me, introspection).   Maybe I could have been more creative with how I interpreted some of the challenges (did I need so many pictures of clouds?) and I certainly could have upped the frequency of my blog posts.  But I am often hard on myself and if I look at it more objectively, it was a great year, I had fantastic experiences, met fabulous new people, went on some amazing vacations, tried new stuff and things and learned a little about myself in the process (I love collared greens, rabbit, and swearing; do not love duck or meditation).

Did it change me in any grand, fundamental way?  Probably not.  I’d like to think I’m a little more self-aware and a bit more forgiving and accepting of my quirks and foibles.  I hope to be forever on the hunt to find ways to become a better version of myself.  I think this year I did that.  Good job, me.  I’m going to do something similar for 2013, so be on the lookout for a new blog name (same URL to make it easy) (you’re easy) and new posts for 2013.  WOO.

Guilt Trips

My sister says to me a couple of weeks ago (via email), "This is how I feel when I check your blog and you haven't updated it."

Your blog is bad and you should feel bad.

My sister is kind of a dick.  Sometimes.  Other times she's kind of awesome.  It's a mixed bag, really. 

November ended with more of a fizzle than a bang.  There was a lot of snot involved.  I single-handedly kept Kleenex in business.  (That is an exaggeration.)  I tried and cooked yummy foods and then, BAM!  Sinus infection.  Did not enjoy.  December rolled around and... where the frak did it go?!

(I want you to know, people, I am resisting the urge to insert a gif of something running here -- as in December flew by.

...

0.o

Oh.  Perhaps I should have been looking for a flying gif.  Anyway.  Gifs are a amazing, but I don't want to over-gif.  Of course, I only update this blog about once a month these days, so there is clearly no fear of "over"doing much of anything.

Instead here is a picture I drew of someone (representing December) running by.  I spent a lot of time on it.)

I laughed so hard while drawing this, his/her/its right hand ended up a little swoopy.
Yeah, that's right.  I laugh at my own jokes.  Alone in my apartment.
Deal with it.

There's really not much to recap for December.  I was meant to be dancing and while I did dance, it wasn't an every day thing.  I took a salsa class (so fun!) and played a few rounds of Dance Central on the old XBox and I even went out in the world dancing (with boys!).  It was fun, but life has a tendency to muck up the works and I didn't dance as much as I had planned.

I fucking love dancing though.  Seriously.  I am not a great dancer.  I'm very, very white and I don't have rhythm and dancing with boys is fun but it always takes me a minute to get down with what they're doing, but ... fuck.  I love it.  I smile like a goon the entire time and like the honey badger, I don't give a shit.  It makes me happy and that's good enough for me.

Carlton just gets me.

He really does get me.

Smashed Assholes

So I'm sick, right?  Got some sort of plague (again).  I get it.  I'm probably not looking my best right now, but I swear to, like, something really powerful -- like a really big chainsaw -- that if one more person at work says something along the lines of, "Wow.  You don't look so good."  Or, "You look like you're going down for the count."  I'm going punch them in the vagina.  Even if they don't have one.

I GET IT!

When I first got to work this morning I was greeted with, "You sound awful, but you look nice."  DID YOU HEAR THAT, OTHER CO-WORKERS?  Either you say something nice or you say nothing at all!  (...no vagina punching for that guy.)

Since I haven't been able to taste anything since Sunday night-ish, my challenge to TASTE ALL THINGS is going by the wayside.  It happens.  I tried.  I don't have the energy to shop or cook or eat anything but carbs.  I don't really move much more than necessary or try make myself look presentable (apparently).  I'll have to eat more things in December.  I don't see that being much of a problem.  Food, good.

It's 8:00.  The very minute the clock strikes 8:30, I am taking two NyQuil and going to bed.

NyQuil. ♥

P.S.  I promise I won't turn this into a Blog of GIFS.  It's a passing attraction.  It will, uhh, pass.