Let’s set the mood. I’m sitting in the offices of the imaginary college which I created in my room. This consists of an 8.5″ x 11″ sheet of paper stating such, a $20 folding table which my laptop and occasional snacks rest on, a television set currently displaying classic Sega Genesis games via Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection for my newly obtained Xbox 360 (my Christmas present from my parents), and a few other pieces of furniture which are unimportant to the entry. Having allowed you to envision my locale, let’s discuss the significant happenings of the last year which come to mind in no particular order.
Sayonara, Sam. When my brother and I came home for Christmas break, we were eager to see our dog Sam. He is/was (foreshadowing?) a Shih Tzu with another breed or twenty mixed in for sure because he was just too large to be a purebred. From what I can remember, my family got him in the spring of 2008 when a friend of one of my mother’s coworkers was moving back to Tennessee where Sam was born but was unable to bring the dog with him/her for whatever reason. Since our beloved Miniature Schnauzers Nelly (F) and Shadow (M) had both passed away by the end of the previous summer, we had been considering finding a new dog at the time and this seemed like a nice fit. Sam won my heart as soon as I met him in the summer of 2008. He did all sorts of goofy tricks that our previous dogs never could learn and was mischievous as well (he had a particularly funny though perhaps disgusting tendency to go through trash cans). Things went well with Sam for the most part during the last 18 or so months, though he was not particularly well-trained in terms of doing a “number two” – he only seemed to want to do so during a walk. If you didn’t walk him often enough, instead of performing this deed when we’d let him outside we’d wake up to find nice little surprises on the carpet in the morning. Fitting his mischievous personality, he seemed only to do so late at night as well as in the corners of rooms as if we would not find it. Seeing as I was rarely the one cleaning up after him, I found the whole ordeal hilarious. Anyway, when my brother and I came home for winter break this year, Sam was acting a bit odd – he started twitching/shaking from time to time. Early last week, he was particularly lethargic though once before he had been this way – last time we had dismissed it as him hurting his leg since he’d be particularly slow when climbing the stairs. After a while, we noticed he didn’t want to eat his food and anything he did eat would just come right back up. After a day or two of head scratching we took him to the vet who thought he had a stomach virus and gave him some pills to prevent vomiting as well as some antibiotics. We took Sam home and tried to get him to take his medicine, but things never really got better and after a day or two he refused to take his pills. This got particularly disgusting after a while since this was near Christmas so we’d go out only to come home and find him covered in his own vomit when left in his crate. At first we washed him after this happened, but it started happening so often that it just wasn’t feasible anymore. At some point after Christmas, we took Sam back to the vet who was amazed that he had dropped from 15 lbs to 12 lbs in less than a week. At this point, they kept him for observations and eventually discovered the pH in his kidneys was abnormally high (not sure what exactly this means) and his blood count was slowly dropping (not sure if this was red or white cells, sorry guys). After a few days of observations, I believe we were prepared to put him down but the vet said he knew a few people who apparently take in sick dogs to look after them until the die. I’m not sure if Sam is still alive right now, but his time with us is over regardless. The sickness was hard on the family, especially since instead of my parents having time off they had to keep track of Sam during the entirety of their vacation. It was also a bit messy because my parents seemed hesitant to take Sam to the vet for cost reasons which I can understand, but I felt guilty thinking maybe the vet or animal hospital would have some panacea for him. As it turns out, the vet is still stumped over why exactly Sam is in such terrible shape and either because he felt guilty about the misdiagnosis before Christmas or he knew we weren’t particularly eager to pay a large bill he kept the cost to a fairly reasonable amount. I guess we aren’t guilty of having killed him since his recovery doesn’t seem likely and the cause is still unknown, but the morality of the situation was taxing on everyone. I have a few things I can take away from this. First, I’ll always remember Sam’s little quirks. The best one was probably how much he hated the doorbell – ask any of my friends and they’ll tell you all about how loud he’d bark and how fast he’d run to the door once he heard it ring. In addition, the sound that a correct answer makes during the Fast Money portion of Family Feud was similar enough to a doorbell for him to react to those as well. He’d also shake his toys violently – in fact, I was the one who got him interested in any of his toys in the first place. What’s sad is my brother and I bought him a new toy (a hedgehog wearing a Santa hat) for Christmas but he was so sick that morning he didn’t ever get a chance to play with it. I think I’m going to keep it in my room to remember him by. Second, I don’t think I’ll ever get a dog again and neither will my family. As much fun as it was to play with Sam, none of us really had the commitment needed to keep a dog active and happy and going through his sickness the past week was traumatizing (our two previous dogs died rather quietly and suddenly). I miss him now because I can feel all of the good memories coming back since the horror of his sickness is becoming more removed each day. I feel like I understood him the best out of anyone in my family and we had a special bond, but I’ll move on somehow.
Anime Revival. OK, so this overlaps with last fall but I think it’s still perfectly valid for this year. I love anime again. I had a few brushes with it earlier on (a former girlfriend introduced me to Yu Yu Hakusho years ago and a friend brought Adieu Galaxy Express 999 to a sleepover when I was in middle school) but I’ve really taken it upon myself to watch a few shows with passion recently. If you’re interested, I watched Galaxy Railways in English, the entirety of Death Note in Japanese, about 75 episodes of Bleach in Japanese, and all the relevant episodes to Naruto in Japanese along with the first few episodes of Naruto: Shippuden in Japanese. OK, so these aren’t necessarily out of the mainstream choices (with the exception of Galaxy Railways perhaps) but I enjoy watching all of them. It’s also worth noting that Luminous Arc and its sequel, both for the Nintendo DS, should also count here since they contain a significant amount of storytelling which is in a manga style. I really like the way the stories are written, especially the close interactions between both friends and rivals in the series. I think it reminds me of my early childhood when I had friends on my neighborhood block and could essentially see them whenever I wanted. It also gives me hope for not being completely alone in the future since although the characters aren’t always perfectly in harmony, they find a way to cooperate and put up with and perhaps even appreciate each others’ quirks. All of this exposure has revived my interest in creating a trading card game with an accompanying story (which will make no reference to said trading cards, so I’m doing it more like Pokemon/Naruto than Yu-Gi-Oh! despite my love for Seto Kaiba et al) which is in the works at the moment. I’m not sure how I’ll eventually go about telling the story since I can’t draw, so you might not see the results for years if I decide to write something extraordinarily detailed just in case I’m the next J.K. Rowling. Man, that comment makes me miss the days when I was more openly and unabashedly arrogant. I was just like Seto Kaiba, except I wouldn’t start every sentence with “Yugi”…
Working/Living near the Rockies. I complained about this summer a bit since it kept me from spending leisurely days at local State Parks taking pictures of sunsets with a certain photographically inclined friend and doing nonsense with the other ones (ha!), but to be honest I really got a taste for what my life will be like until I retire and quite honestly I’m OK with it. Work was a joy since I had a good amount of freedom to do a scientific project that was both challenging and relevant though you’ll never believe how hard finding a time for lunch was some days (if I had it my way, it’d always be at some set time but I guess other people like to wing it). Out of work life was sometimes fun and sometimes not, but I think it was a good experience overall. I met a few people who I enjoyed spending time with and who I likely offended and confused along the way. The only things I’d like to add to this in the coming years would be the following. First, I’ll have more access to video games (accomplished with the attainment of my XBox 360 to be followed by the purchase of another Wii for my apartment this Fall since the current one which I have a 50% stake in ownership in I could not take with me in good faith since it would screw my brother). Second, I’ll be more decisive in terms of things I do and do not like to do. There were times this summer where I did a few things that I probably shouldn’t have and missed out on a few I should have done. In any case, I’ll try harder in the future to make the correct decisions. Third, I’ll finally get around to cooking my own food since it’s cheap and I don’t think I could eat fast food as often as we did in good faith in the coming years. Fourth, I’ll have my own car so I can drive for leisure at my leisure for my leisure. Despite the many disputes that Vortex (my roommate) and I had this summer, I feel like our relationship grew stronger and I’ll be happy to have him as a friend and colleague for the rest of my life.
The End of an Era. You know, I honestly don’t know why I couldn’t settle on being single. I spend so much time pushing people away that it’s probably incredible for any outsider to expect me to have ever wanted a significant other yet that’s been the case for the last ten (!) years (some call this a decade). By the way, the number ten is coming from the fact that in 6th grade I had my first “girlfriend” though I don’t think my first serious girlfriend existed until the beginning of 9th grade. In any case, my reasons for wanting a relationship are essentially shallow and self-centered so any time I pursue a girl it’s almost like a direct insult to them. Granted, I’m sure most of them don’t necessarily realize that at the time but it’s true and I know it. This year was spent on two separate people, one codenamed “The Train” and the other “X Girl” (in reality, X stands for something but to post it here would make who I’m referring to blatantly obvious). Neither of them read this blog to my knowledge so if you’re reading now I didn’t have a shallow self-centered crush on you this year. Too bad. Anyway, the first with “The Train” was awkward in that I tried to be nice but when I was I was met with very strange responses almost as if complements were insults. Oddly enough, I never got a “no” from this person. The second was idiotic in that X Girl was entirely too into doing stuff whereas when not working I’m generally more lazy. Even though both were stretches, at least I did not make the mistake of going after people who were, how shall we say, “compromises”, i.e., people who I could never form anything beyond a shallow friendship with outside of the romance. I haven’t done that for 2.5 years now by my count, so I think I’ve at least improved. After the romances I mentioned (both had been proven dead by the end of July), I really started to think about what a shallow, petty person I am in terms of girl searching and tried to become more comfortable with being single perhaps even the rest of my life. As it is, I don’t put much into many potential friendships because I no longer feel compelled to work at relationships that require me to lie to people especially when it comes to caring about problems (which is ironic considering I’m probably the annoying friend that fits this profile to all of my readers) so I don’t see how I could manage to meet a significant other at home after a day of work and attempt to care about some silly, meaningless problem he or she is having that day (how’s that for sexual ambiguity, eh?). I find the process of buying engagement rings or jewelry in generally ridiculous since buying love is exactly the kind of thing I’d avoid at all costs. I almost feel like I grew out of love in that whatever idealized version of a relationship I used to envision as possible I know see as some sexist delusion used to keep myself from insanity. If that’s the case, I’d prefer insanity to being a male chauvinistic bastard. I’m perfectly content with my current imagination of my place in society, which is an advisor to undergraduate and graduate students in meteorology/climatology and the “uncle” of my photographic friend’s yet to be conceived children.
Musical Hiatus. Other than a few random tidbits of music, this year has been rather quiet for imperfectepoch. I think my previous problems with music have resurfaced. You see, my junior year of high school I was a fairly good cellist with enough potential to play professionally but when I stopped to think about why I played cello I realized I only did it because I liked the praise and attention. Once this realization sunk in, I essentially lost my desire to play altogether and deserted the instrument more or less. This did not go well at all and I’ll leave that story for another day. My current hiatus from writing music is similar though. I used to use my pieces as a conversational topic with friends and crushes, but now that I’m no longer on an “I Need to Impress People” kick I just don’t feel like writing anything will result in anything significant. Maybe I’ll find some inspiration in the coming months, but it may be that this part of my life is simply dying out altogether. I can’t say I’d be upset if that were the case either. I often resented being known solely for my musical accomplishments since I was good at other things anyway.
Lady Gaga. Lady Gaga also happened in 2009.
Anyway, since I can’t think of anything else too earth shattering to talk about at the moment, I’ll discuss a bit the ways in which I intend to improve the way I conduct myself in the coming time. I’d like to see some more structure in my life. I spend a lot of days not knowing what to do with my time and that just leads to depression and frustration once my windows of free time end. Based on this wish, I’d like to budget more time specifically for video games (which I love to play but rarely commit to getting through leaving me with tons of games I never finish), research (I’d like to do enough to have a paper published with my current advisor in the coming year), and creative projects/meditation (both of these tend to calm me down and make me happy). Based on my own reflections and what a little bird whispered in my ear recently, I’m going to be more open and pretentious in my relationships. That is, instead of taking how often a person talks to me as a measure of how much they care I’m just going to disregard that and talk to someone the same way I would if they talked to me on a daily basis. If I get rebuffed then I’ll consider dropping the friendship, but I don’t see much harm in leaving people around versus throwing them into the dust. I’m a selfish friend anyway and I’m no less lonely when “punishing” people for “not caring” – I only end up hurting myself. I can still feel betrayed and angry at people without having to show it so openly, so I don’t think this new attitude is too harmful or makes me “weak” (whatever that means). After having had 5-6 small bottles of watered down wine over the course of four months, I’m swearing off alcohol altogether since I can find no reason to fall in love with it (not that I ever dreamed that I would). If you’re reading this and had hoped I’d go to bars to get drunk with you, it’s not happening. Do what you want, but know that I’m out. I guess the final thing is to stop worrying about the past which is often a problem for me. There’s really nothing I can change so I’m going to keep my chin up and move forward with my life. I’ve spent enough time feeling sorry for myself and others recently and I’m ready to be a compliment to “society” instead of a detriment where god knows what my definition of society is here. That’s all for now. I don’t really feel like re-reading what has become a 3000+ word essay on the last year, so if there are any strange linguistic quirks be an understanding human for once, k?
