January 1, 2013

This is a disorganized, rambling, and unedited list of thoughts heading into 2014:

I'd like to start writing here more often. When I committed to one post per day, I always read the news, I stayed updated on what kinds of events were coming up in the city. I read the newspaper and social media FAR more often than I do now. It wasn't the posting of news and events, but the searching that really helped me stay plugged in to happenings and events that I would enjoy. If I do start blogging more often, I feel locked in to the once per day due to the name of the blog. But I suppose I could just change the name again. It's not like my millions of readers would be missing out.

Here's the other thing. Pictures. Oh my goodness do I stink at pictures. Not only do I stink at knowing what is picture-worthy, but I also stink at finding tasteful ways to take pictures. Selfies are completly out. That's just not my kind of thing. They feel so limiting. You're committed to one perspective and the same type of framing in EVERY photo. I would want photos that showed a little more thought an effort, but the alternative is not having photos at all. An example from today, we played Takenoko and Lost Cities at the Beverdige Place in West Seattle. We had a great time. There are no photos. Wouldn't it have been nice to have a picture to remember that carefree afternoon?

There are also no pictures of me on the internet. I honestly don't think I've been in a photo in the last four months. (Just checked Bookface. I'm a liar. There's a photo from the Storm game in September.)

(Are selfies EVER flattering?)

(And why are my eyes closed in every F@#%ing picture!) 

And this blog helps me take more pictures in general, which means a better chance of a picture of me. Wow, that sounds conceited, but it's true. My friends are not big photographers, so if I don't do it, I don't think it's going to happen. Here's one thing that's strange, I'm not sure there are any pictures of me wearing a suit. I go to functions where I wear a suit, but I don't have any pictures. Maybe I should just go on a photoshoot around the city, where I change into fourteen different outfits in one day? 

Nothing good ever happens on Bookface. I don't care about DAILY updates on your dogs, cats, children or "vaca". (Do you really say that word "Vay-cay"? Seriously?). To be clear, the people, things, and events in your life are great, but I'll hear about them when we talk face to face. If we never talk face to face, that should be all you need to know. And why the heck don't we talk face to face?

That's more of a problem for me because no one from college lives out here. So there are four/five years of my life where I didn't meet people my age who share my sensibilities. That's the story of my life. When I started Boy Scouts, my entire den quit within a year. I was put in a group with people older or younger than myself. Most other people I know who are my age now have kids or a dog. Which means they can't do anything ever.

In the last few years, I've picked a yearly skill to learn. One year it was snowboarding, One year it was golf. It strikes me that I don't really practice the skills I had before. I'm decent at the trumpet. And I'm pretty good at tennis. But I don't do these activities often because I'm busy trying to learn new skills that I'm not good at. I told my students the other day that I've definitely lost brain cells since starting my teaching job. Which must be true. I say the same thing 5 times a day, and then repeat all of it the next year. (To any teachers reading this, yes I vary the instruction method to best meet the cognitive and emotional development of the individual learners. I passed National Boards, so I can spout educational B.S. with the best of them.)  Anyway, I haven't picked a skill this year. I'm leaning towards guitar, though I've been picking away at that for a few years. I can play this song:

Which may or may not qualify me as a guitar player. It probably doesn't. I used to think being able to play "Classical Gas" would make me feel like a guitar player. But that's a hard song:

He's only playing one guitar there. Maybe I need to lower my expectations.

It's time to get over my aversion to birthdays and special occasions. I think I struggle with drawing attention to myself. Which is probably why I write on this unread blog rather than on the internet. This blog is like the worst LiveJournal ever, isn't it? Part of me feels like I should start planning get-togethers, but it feels like I would have to get really good at using Bookface or email. Which might just be a necessary evil. I'd like to go to Add-A-Ball now that they've finally added a women's restroom. And that probably tells you everything you need to know about that arcade.

When I was in college, I wanted to get into cooking. Food Network was always on TV and Rachel Ray or Alton Brown cookbooks were go to presents from my family. College was the ABSOLUTE worst time to try and cook. First, I didn't have a car to go to the store and get ingredients, which turned every shopping trip into a goddamn odyssey. Have you ever tried to shop with someone who had a completely different grocery list? It take FOREVER! Plus, you're stuck going at odd times of the day, when both your schedules are free, which means Club Publix is wall to wall shoppers. 

On a related note, I can't smell the food as I'm cooking it, (I'M SMELLBLIND!) so sometimes I'm unaware that everything I'm cooking smells like fish. And furthermore, my cooking audience has always included extremely "picky eaters". As a recovering "picky eater" myself, I'm of two minds about new foods. 

-Of course we should try new food. There was a time in out lives when we'd never tried the foods we now love the most.

-I don't need to try a ghost pepper to know that it would reduce me to a quivering ball of tears and pain. 

Picky eaters are not a great audience to practice your new cooking. My roommates in college were picky, my roommates after college were picky, and now I live in the middle of all these businesses that will cook food for me on demand. They only want a little money in return? WELL WORTH IT!!

The fact that I'm thinking about it probably means that I should try and cook. Like with everything new I learn, I just have to be ok, with starting from scratch and progressing slowly. I could start with one meal a week. And provide you with a overly detailed explanation of how I followed someone else's recipe. >thinking< That would provide me with a way to track my progress and learn from my mistakes. Maybe I should do exactly that.

My kitchen is criminally underused. I don't even own official plates. At some point, I just bought paper plates and thought, "good enough". I'm AWARE this is probably not a very mature thing to do. But who are you to tell me what to do? I'm an ADULT, gosh darn it!

I also keep toying with the idea of revamping my wardrobe. My only hangup there is that I don't feel like I could wear a suit to work. I would feel incredibly overdressed and it doesn't seem very practical. I used to wear dress shirts and ties and I didn't feel like I could move around the room to work with the kids. I still have quite a collection of ties from my student teaching experience. 

Running as grown on me over the last few years. My main barrier to athletics has been finding other people who want to go outside and play. As a child, my brother and I had a bin in the garage and we had all manner of sports equipment at our disposal (one of the benefits of having a father who teaches P.E.). In college, we played IM. And I played soccer for a few years until the rest of the team started to quit (due to babies and injuries). 

Running doesn't require anyone else, which is the best and worst part about it. I've read a few different ideas about how to add the team aspect back into what is basically the most solitary sport on the planet. Maybe I need to get into the adventure/obstacle racing. For a split second, I worried about becoming "bro-ey" but I think that train left the station long ago. Board games and comic books won't suddenly stop being awesome. 

Computer coding is another skill I'd like to learn. CodeAcademy is great, and I probably just need to gut it out before I can make something really cool. They did already teach me how to make a very basic "Choose Your Own Adventure" text-based game. So I'm basically Bill Gates already.

And I'd like to read more. And watch more movies. And play more games. And play more sports. And learn new things. And go to more happy hours. And keep most things the same but also radically change everything else.

Do I like all of the things that I'll ever like in my life? I mean, am I going to discover some new passion at this point in my life? I really hope so.

I like my job, my apartment is cozy and in a good neighborhood, and I have a car that will take me anywhere at anytime. I can't remember the last time I was bored.