2006 Redux

It’s a bit early to do my year-end recap for my New Year’s Resolutions, but I doubt I’ll have a chance on the 31st and doubt I’m going to do any last life goals in the next week, so please indulge me. . . Here’s the essential text from last year’s post:

My resolutions aren’t like other people’s (lose weight, be happy, smite non-believers). My resolutions are definite. And my resolutions are 18.

That is to say that I make 18 resolutions. Each resolution has 20 days to be fulfilled, which means that the resolutions must have legitimate goals that can be measured. Some resolutions take longer than others, but so long as I have fulfilled a resolution an average of every 20 days, I’m good.

To wit: 18 x 20 = 360, which is as close as I could get to 365 without being dumb (5 resolutions every 73 days!).

And here are the resolutions in full:

1. Move to Las Cruces, New Mexico
2. Switch to Word Press
3. Get a publishing program for Mac (QuarkXPress, Indesign, but sadly not Publisher)
4. Find a hairstyle I like
5. Walk across a mountain and toilet paper two cars
6. Register with the Small Business Administration
7. Set up a legitimate Pix Capacitor website
8. Set up a legitimate Pix Capacitor viewspaper
9. Visit some [label missing]s
10. Have some [label missing]s visit me
11. See some of the family I never get to see anymore
12. Get Skype and talk to some old [label missing]s
13. Make some new [label missing]s and be a [good friend] to those I already have
14. Save $1,000 for Australia
15. Memorize another two or three poems and brush up on the ones I already know
16. Revolutionize The Round Up
17. Kill (and possibly eat) Gabe the Beaver… or at least seriously maim (and possibly chew) him.
18. Be happy… that I killed Gabe the Beaver… or at least seriously maimed him.

And here is the bulleted analysis:

• I did finally move to Las Cruces for my last few semesters (#1). Heck, I did it twice! Once was with a large, black man and once with a friend’s older, balder, fatter brother.
• This blog is now hosted courtesy of Word Press (#2).
• I did eventually get both Quark and Indesign (along with Pages, Mac’s answer to Publisher). Unfortunately, due partially to an ill-considered ‘update’ to my laptop, I cannot use any of them (a little known corollary to #3).
• No. 4 was arguably my easiest resolution. Having just recently shaved my head, it would be easy to sculpt any style I admired, but it proved my most elusive resolution yet. I found hair styles other people liked, but I never found anything I wanted to keep for any length of time.
• I walked across the Anthony Gap for the fifth time in five years (#5), but never toilet papered any cars because our intended target found out that we’d been responsible for her car and house getting toilet papered every six months for the past six years. Ironically, it was the exact post stating my intent to do it again that got us caught and thus forever ruined that tradition.
• I did not or could not do No. 6-8 for a variety of reasons. One reason was my lack of ability in designing for the Web, another was my inexplicable lack of motivation to continue a project I started when I was 14 (though I did design a kick-ass format), but mainly I found myself hating it all. My roommate (the older, balder, fatter one) offered me the cash to get started, but there were so many strings attached, I would have hanged myself if I’d taken the money.
• I visited some friends from high school this year (#9, sort of), but missed all the ones that came to visit me (#10). I’ll mark it as a victory, though, because half of my extended family came to my graduation (#11) and I’m still going to see more old friends this next year.
• I downloaded Skype and set up an account (#12), but never actually used it. I was able to talk to some old friends, but not nearly as much as I would have wanted to. That was my fault alone and a personal flaw I shall correct by next year. It actually cost me a girlfriend a half a world away, which hurt. Being unreliable is a new and ugly side of me. I hope nobody has to put up with that again.
• I definitely made new friends (#13) with fantastic friggin’ people, but whether I was a good friend to my old friends is a judgment call.
• I now have $1,000 locked safely away in a bank account for a future trip around the world (#14).
• I don’t know if I’ve memorized two new poems, but I know I will have by the end of the week (#15).
• I fully believe I revolutionized the college paper with whatever authority I had (#16). I did so well, in fact, it got me fired.
• Gabe the Beaver (a humor columnist) died under mysterious circumstances this year (#17) and I was happy for whatever part I had in his demise (#18).

Total: 9 resolutions fully completed (50%), 1 to be completed this week (5.6%), 3 resolutions were ‘half-finished’ (16.7%), 1 resolution is a judgment call (5.6%) and I completely failed at the last 4 resolutions (22.2%). All in all, a good year, I’d say.

Next post: an in-depth analysis of Pixel Q. Styx ©2006. Consider yourself warned.

It’s a bit early to do my year-end recap for my New Year’s Resolutions, but I doubt I’ll have a chance on the 31st and doubt I’m going to do any last life goals in the next week, so please indulge me. . . Here’s the essential text from last year’s post: My resolutions aren’t…