2011 in Review
What happened in 2011? Well, first off, I abandoned this blog again. I didn’t have a clear idea of what direction I was even aiming for, and none of my plans were particularly cohesive1. Additionally, I was at a strange point in my life. For the first half of the year I didn’t do much at all. Off the top of my head, I can’t recall any significant thing that happened to me or that I did, aside from having a birthday.
However, the last half of my year was quite eventful for the better, as well as the worse in some cases, but overwhelmingly for the better.
At the very end of July I moved to a town just south of the U.S.-Canadian border and about 100 miles north of Seattle, where I’d lived my entire life. The town, Bellingham, which I affectionately refer to as the Ham pretty much any time I talk about it, is pretty awesome.
I’m finally back in school with no intent of taking another break until I not only finish my bachelor’s degree, but my master’s as well. I’m doing pretty well academically (4.0 GPA, gogo!) despite the fact I still procrastinate like it’s my job. I think I’ve finally settled on what I want to do with my life (another post for another day).
I joined my school’s QSA, or queer-straight alliance, at the beginning of fall quarter to meet people and get involved, and ended up becoming the secretary after a few weeks. We throw some bitchin’ parties and I love everyone in the club. It’s fantastic and meeting other queer people is always nice, particularly in an area that’s surrounded by some severely conservative town, and thus some of the homophobia around is a little bit higher than I’m used to in Seattle. Overall, however, the Ham is pretty awesome in that regard. I haven’t had any major incidents, just a few minor ones.
I started to take advantage of several hours of free language tutoring on campus for speaking practice for Spanish and French, which I’m studying once again because, goddammit, I love languages. I would learn ALL THE LANGUAGES if I could. The Spanish conversation tutoring is particularly important in that I’m going to go visit my friend Hans, or Patty as everyone else calls her, in Venezuela this coming August/September if all goes according to plan. I can’t wait to see my favorite brontosaurus’ face and eat all the amazing Venezuelan food she keeps telling me her mom wants to make me! This will also be my first real trip abroad. I’m ridiculously excited as I’ve been dying to travel for basically my whole entire life. I’m desperate to see everything, but money is such a cockblocker sometimes, dudes.
Speaking of money, that leads me to my next point: I joined AmeriCorps’ Students in Service program (despite its website’s desperate need of a facelift) which basically means I get paid to volunteer. The payout after I complete 300 hours of service is coincidentally nearly exactly the same price to the dollar as a roundtrip Seattle-Caracas ticket.
I’ve started eating a lot healthier (with the last month or so an exception) and have lost a bit of weight, though I still have quite a bit more to go. While I still have several medical issues that need to be dealt with, and hopefully I can begin to deal with them soon as I just got medical insurance for the first time in several years on January 1st, I’m glad I’ve started taking a step in the right direction. I’m very much motivated by seeing results, because if I don’t see results I tend to give up quickly, so early success is helping me keep my eye on the prize, so to speak.
My mom and I got a bit closer this year. She celebrated her first AA birthday (as well as her real birthday) in August, for which I’m very proud of her. We had an amazing time at the Puyallup Fair in September, just the two of us. We bought Dizzy Passes, or unlimited ride passes, and rode rides all day and spent a completely insane amount of money on fair food, but it was worth it. We had a complete blast even if our feet were about dead after standing for about 14 hours straight.
My dad and I get along quite a lot better when I live away from home so that’s been great. We talk frequently. He still says insane and hilarious (sometimes inadvertent on his part) things that I can text to all of my friends.
Internet-wise, I’m still a Twitter scrub in that I don’t seem to post nearly as frequently as everyone else I know, but I’m sort of fine with that. However, after lamenting circa 2009ish that I didn’t understand WTF the point of Tumblr even was, I am now a tumblin’ fiend. I tumble all the things! I even recently started a new tumblr dedicated to reblogging all the Joss Whedon-related things I find and enjoy. I loves me some Firefly.
I’d kill for a Tumblr-style RSS feed aggregator sometimes. It’d be so much easier to keep on top of my reading, though I have been managing quite well lately after culling some old feeds I was never reading. I do still need to learn to be less of a lurker! I’ve always had an issue with being an epic lurker.
Perhaps that’s one more thing I’ll work on in the new year. More about that later. For tonight, I’m out.
- However, I’ve now done a total redesign and culled some useless pages and reorganized and rewritten quite a lot. ↩
Mostly Alive, Nearly Kicking
I am not dead! I felt as if I was, but alas, am not. I was going through a rough personal time including, but not limited to, death in the family. I’m still trying to get through it and I realize now that had I been regularly clearing out my mind here, I might feel better.
I’ll moving to a new site within the next few days and will be posting much more often.
Despite the bad, a few good things have happened since my last entry:
1) I went to see The Phantom of the Opera when the tour came to Seattle. It was a-effing-mazing and worth every penny of the exorbinant amount I spent on my four row-center tickets. Despite the fact I totally couldn’t afford them.
2) I took a day trip to Bellingham with my friend who was catching the ferry to Alaska.
I loved it, particularly Fairhaven. It was pouring down rain when we arrived by train and the first thing we see is a fish and chip shop being run out of a double-decker bus with a gazebo on the side for indoor dining. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen at that point. We were there for over half an hour and yet our food managed to be burn-your-mouth hot the entire time.
Click on image to go to source.
It’s particularly good that I loved it because I’ll be moving up there when I transfer to Western Washington University for their elementary education program.
I want to get my master’s degree in Library and Information Science (an MLIS) so I want to get my teaching qualifications as an undergraduate while still being able to double major. The education program before the double major is a five and a half year program. Adding in another concentration to that might add a considerable amount of time, but I’m hoping to plan it well.
3) My friend and I have resolved to travel through Europe for three months in 2009, unless one of us wins the lottery in which case we’re replacing the words ‘Europe’ and ‘three months’ with ‘the world’ and ‘forever’. Likely from September to December. I’ve done the math on what I need to save (plus what I was saving for my formal education, but am now deciding to blow on travel–a different sort of education, but arguably of equal importance) so I’m in the process of trying to find an additional job or two that pays the same or better than my current job.
