2014: A Year in Review

Yes! It's yet again time for a year in review post! I seemed to have missed last year. Whatever. And 2012 year in review post was not very long ago. Also whatever. Okay, but how to review the year? I don't really like the format from 2012. Well. Let's see. What happened.

My last semester of college. That was a good semester. Didn't take as many classes or do any TAing, so I had more time to concentrate on my senior capstone project, which was really nice and turned out awesome. I watched a lot of documentaries. Also watched a lot of random movies. between FILM club and Sunday night movies and my documentaries class, I watched a metric shit-ton of movies. I tried to do research. It didn't really work out. No Erdős number for me. Um. Spent a lot of time being kind of sexually frustrated as per my uz. I did end up getting my degree. That was nice I guess.

I had Roommate over for a little bit during the summer! We went camping. We were eaten by mosquitoes. Did a lot of Home State things. Nice.

I did a big European adventure! I went to Europe for a couple months. I even went by myself. It was pretty cool. This was blogged about. But I guess I can summarize my experience. It was very interesting. I met people. I saw people I knew. I did cool things like bike across a country on a bike I bought off of German Craigslist. I spent a week sleeping in a tent on an island for a music festival. I spent a week in Norway. I visited the hometown of my Norwegian ancestry. It was a really interesting experience. Some things went to shit. Nothing went to shit too badly. I mean. My phone got a little water-logged so I had to get a new one. And that went to shit a little bit, that that all got fixed up. And my bike got a bad flat and I didn't have the tools to fix it really, but there was a gas station pretty close by and some friendly German people so that worked out. I guess there was a not very friendly Italian guy early on, but I got out of there too. Oh and I guess my knee was a little broken early on too, but that wasn't anything an ace bandage couldn't fix. Oh and poison plants. I'm pretty sure Austria is full of nettles. Oh and the ants. Ants everywhere. Crawling on you. These things are more inconveniences though than things going to shit. For the most part things were fine. I did a lot of walking around. A lot of biking around. A lot of hating cities on bikes. Some sleeping under bridges. Some eating wild blackberries. For a lot of the trip I wished that I had someone traveling with me. I did meet up with some people which was fun and I did make some friends which was also fun, but I think I maybe could have gotten more out of the places I visited if I were a little braver and more adventurous. The kind of adventurous you can be when you have a cohort. But it was nice to spend a lot of time by myself too. I think I got to appreciate myself a little bit more. I realized that if I described my adventures to me, I would have thought that I sounded really cool, which is kind of an awesome feeling that you're becoming the kind of person you wish you were. Apparently you can kind of just do it. You can just be the kind of person you wish you were if you're brave enough. I spent a lot of time talking to myself. A lot of time singing to myself. A little bit of time drinking by myself. Some time being afraid by myself. At the time, I kind of felt like I didn't as much out of the trip as maybe I should have. Like maybe it wasn't awful enough, you know, maybe I didn't grow enough. But I think I did get a lot out of it. And I would like to do another, slightly more adventurous trip with somebody.

When I got back, I started working at my real person job, living in my real person apartment. The job is nice. Stable. Not the most exciting but with a good work-life balance. I am sometimes concerned that maybe I should be doing something more interesting. Maybe I will be soon when I 'm given a little bit more control of things. But I am a little concerned that maybe I should be sacrificing some work-life balance to work on something really cool. I feel like I should be pushing the boundaries of the current technology. That I should be doing something new. Ultimately I feel a bit like a cog in the machine. If I weren't doing the thing I'm doing someone else would be at approximately the same level of quality. Things happen because they must happen and it doesn't matter who does them. That got a little bleak. Job is actually a really nice place with nice people. I'm just not very important. None of us are. At least Job is probably doing good things that make the world a better place.

That's life now. I took salsa lessons for 10 weeks. But I don't really care about salsa. Maybe if it were a different kind of dancing I would have stuck with it. Or maybe if entering a community didn't terrify me. I think I would like to learn other kinds of dancing like Swing or Blues but I don't know if I have time right now. I think taking one weekly class is enough, and right now that's sketchy Chinese lessons. I think they're working. When I was back home, I could follow conversations better than normal because I know more words.

I also started a dating campaign, described elsewhere. It was exhausting when I was meeting lots of different people all at once. I was kind of hoping that the amount of effort would stay roughly constant as I transitioned from dating lots of people to just the one, but really I don't think it has. It's less draining for sure but also way more time consuming. I guess it will get less time consuming again as schedules normalize maybe. Also it's really nice. It's kind of strange to not be single and sexually frustrated. And also kind of intimidating since relationships are very new for me and I don't know what to expect. Probably the wise thing to do would be to expect nothing and never listen to articles on the internet about relationships because they're universally awful. Like if you fall into the traps of what society says Men and Women and relationships are like, then I don't really see how you don't have an awful relationship. I dunno. Maybe it works for people who aren't me. Or maybe labels are just fucking traps and fuck them and the boxes they try to put me in.

Should I do a bit with pop culture and number and things?
Why not. This one will be a bit lazier than the one I did for 2012.

Movies: I saw a fuckton. Most of them did not come out in 2014. Of the movies that did come out in 2014, I wanted to see but did not see quite a few of them. Meh. Not sure if this was once I saw in 2014 proper, but one notable film was The Act of Killing which is a kind of horrifying and painful documentary about a genocide from the perspective of the perpetrators. I also finally saw Mallrats which was super weird and I loved it. The last movie I saw was Birdman which was a little confusing towards the end but also really enjoyable and OH MAN Edward Norton.

TV: A lot of excellent TV has been happening and I can only watch so much. But it's fine, I'm fine with missing out on TV. I think for the most part, I do not feel like TV especially enriches my life however enjoyable it may be, with some exceptions. That said, Korra has been amazing for its final seasons. Fargo was also amazing. And Last Week Tonight is basically the best comedy news show ever and was for a while my actual source of actual news. I just finished watching Orange is the New Black and that was excellent as well. I tried catching up on Game of Thrones and also watching Breaking Bad and honestly I just don't care enough about these shows to bother.

Books: I actually read quite a bit while I was traveling in Europe. Sometimes you get tired of walking around or biking around all the time and can take an hour to read. Can't quite remember everything that I read though. I know I finished up the Game of Thrones books that are out. I read the Silkworm, by JKRowling. I had a book that I kept trading for other books. It went from Tuesdays with Morrie that some nice lady gave me at a garage sale to The Twelve Tribes of Hattie I think to Phantom Prey which was not a very good book but easy to read this turned into some kind of cold war spy thriller that I just could get into but I traded that for The Gift by David Flusfeder which I loved which then became The Matador of the Five Towns which was less easy to read but was enjoyable. There were things before then but I don't remember them. I'm pretty sure I finished at least two books while Roommate was visiting me. I tried reading Cloud Atlas, but had trouble getting into it. I'll probably try again. I also read John Dies at the End which was a lot of fun.

I feel like these year in review things would be a lot more interesting if I kept the data around instead of just saying the things I remember because that is so not the point but its better than nothing.

Oh! Resolutions!
- Blog more. Haha. Yeah. Let's go for once a month at least.
- Exercise more - let's say work out twice a week
- Do that thing where you pick something to do every day for a month.
- Do side projects. This one's kind of a doozy. It's something that I really feel like I should be doing more of but never seem to have the time. Obviously the time has to be made so maybe that's one of my month things to do.