Self-Evaluation

I've been in the office since 8am, and it looks as if I'll be here until 10pm. I may as well blog some more.

2008's almost over, and I'm going to the Midwest next week, so now is as good a time as any to look back at my new year's resolutions and how well I failed at them.


(1) Clean my room. I cleaned it eventually, but now it's a mess again.
(2) Start a savings account. Success! And it's 25 dollars strong.
(3) Don't get in any serious bike accidents. Well done there.
(4) Change party affiliation so I can vote in Democratic primary. Yes. I'm now an independent, or whatever we're called here. "Decline to State" or something.
(5) Dental appointment. Sadly, no. It involves picking up the phone.
(6) See optometrist. See item (5)
(7) Sign up for more math classes. No. Still finishing up the old one.
(8) Go on one or more camping trips. Yes, two! One was a disaster, but the other was not.
(9) Get into graduate school. Bastards.
(10) Blog at least once a week. Ha!
(11) Drink less. Amazingly, I have! But mostly because I'm too poor to afford drinks.
(12) Save enough money to travel to Iceland this summer. Perhaps Rome. Alas. See items (2) and (11).

Not so bad. Now: back to sitting in my office for the 14th hour straight. Until next year, reader(s?).

The View from My Recession

We found a new flatmate. He's our thirteenth in three years. Or maybe the fourteenth or fifteenth; I can't keep track anymore. He seems to have two girlfriends. They spend alternating nights at our place, and my first thought was that I must be truly awful at recognizing faces. An ex-addict, current law student, barkeep, and apparently manslut, he does seem interesting, maybe a little too interesting, which is why he wasn't our first choice to begin with. But then, our first choices do keep on disappearing on us--

It's that time of year again; time to apply to yet another masters program that I may as well have picked out of a hat; time to beg profs who don't remember me for letters of recommendation; time to make up a coherent narrative in which I travel smoothly from point A through point B all the way to point C when the true story is much more Lynch than Hollywood; time to ask my boss for money; time for all this merriment, and ah, could it be a more wondrous economic clime?

At least I have a job. A full-time job, with so many people underemployed. I really should not be complaining. My own personal recession could be a lot worse.

I'm late to work all the time now, almost every day. But today I biked to the train at sunrise with brain and body in full revolt, and it was kind of nice. Arriving at the station I felt warm and awake in my windbreaker while everyone else yawned and shivered in their coats. Maybe that's what success feels like.

Screw narrative. This isn't narrative. I don't remember narrative. I don't read novels or stories anymore, I just click through blogs, follow links across the Internet, skim the Economist, apply to three radically different programs in three consecutive years; maybe the lack of narrative is narrative enough. I'm just confusing myself with words now and I think I need another tea. I'll be back again sometime.