I’m pretty sure I can count on one hand just how many people are in this office today. Granted, I’m not complaining at the fact that I’m getting paid to sit here and do absolutely no work, but man, I certainly wouldn’t have minded sleeping in this morning. But instead, I trudged out of bed at 6:30 a.m. to go run around the ‘hood in 36 degree weather, and here I sit, waiting for a few hours to pass, since I made it all the way out here already. So with that in mind, and since I’ve pretty much seen the entire work-safe internet now, I suppose it’s not a bad time to sit back and catch up on some writing. And with the end of the year literally right around the corner, why not use that as a topic?
Since I’m at the office, and don’t ever visit my own sites on the network for paranoid fear that they’ll one day find my online identity, I’m musing most of this based on what I can remember off the top of my head. But the good news is that, as a whole, I don’t think that the encapsulated 2011 year was a very bad year at all. Compared to 2010, it was a much improved year. At first blush I want to say that it wasn’t anything magnificently spectacular, but the more I think about it, I guess I can say that 2011 was a pretty decent year overall.
As is the general structure of the last few years, we have a few months, the baseball months, and then the holidays and the end of the year. I travel to a bunch of places, try and look all worldly and well-traveled, hang out with as many people as I can, and try to make new experiences whenever I can, all while doing my best to maintain a somewhat regular professional schedule and keep the bills paid. This year was not much different than that. But I guess the difference is that a lot of personal bullshit stayed out of the picture, no curvy temptress mindfucked me, and no worthless hood rats attempted to break into my house, which are all positives in my book. Granted, it’s not to say that my year was absolved of all nonsense, as I found my parents’ marital struggles to be upsetting at first, but grew to be more of an aggravated, repetitive annoyance by this point, but the fact that it’s not more severe is more tolerable.
A few things stand out when I look back at the year as a whole:
- Two weddings of close friends, which also meant two bachelor parties, both coincidentally at Myrtle Beach
- Zombie run
- Traveling to Kansas City and St. Louis for baseball
- Traveling to Miami for baseball
- Traveling to Phoenix for baseball
- Dragon-Con
All of these were widely positive experiences this year, and I have fond memories of all of them. Even if the city of Miami actually kind of blew, I still absolutely loved going kayaking in the bay and seeing first hand just how shitty Marlins baseball is in person. Phoenix is actually an extremely boring metropolitan area, but the baseball experience was second to none. I was widely ill-prepared for the Zombie run, but I still managed to “survive,” on assistance from Cheetos and a little bit of my own guile. I probably biffed on a chance to connect with the blue-haired chick at Dragon-Con, but still had a tremendous amount of Four Loko-induced fun regardless. And of course, I’m in the odd minority of those who enjoy the weddings of close friends, regardless of much of a pain in the ass they sometimes are capable of being.
But it’s not just the events of the year that make a year good, it’s also a lot of the little things as well. I’m thankful to have landed an open-ended freelance assignment this year, that I’m currently bitching about not having any work to do, but the truth is still that I’ve been here since March, and have been able to claw out a little bit of financial stability in the process. I ditched the Mazda lemon that had plagued me for most of last winter, and in spite of the fact that I’ll have car payments again for the next few years, it’s somewhat of a relief knowing that I have less worry about warning lights popping up spontaneously than I previously did.
I suppose I can say I’ve surrounded myself with decent people throughout the year, as I can’t really think of any niggling conflicts or beefs I’ve had with anyone. Maybe I’m too reclusive or non-confrontational, but I’d like to think that a life without conflicts is a life with fewer stresses in general.
One ironic thing is that when the baseball season ended, it ended on a genuinely sour note, with the Braves having a collapse that would legitimately be considered epic. Long story short for those who obviously couldn’t give two shits about sports, the Braves were at one point 92% guaranteed to make the playoffs, but when the last game of the season ended, the Braves missed the playoffs, and the team that took their spot ended up winning the World Series. I admit it was extremely disappointing, but mostly due to the fact that I’m exposed to baseball on such a fan’s level on the internet, I guess seeing the misery and consumption of lives that baseball had on others had somewhat of a detaching effect on me, and by the time the failure was complete, I was almost relieved that I didn’t have to deal with it anymore. Maybe it kind of makes me a bad fan, the way I essentially ran away from the worst of the disappointment, but I kind of didn’t want to deal with it, either. Thirty fanbases start the seasons with hopes, clearly not every single one of them is going to have their dreams fulfilled. There will always be, next season.
This year, I’ve spent an absurd amount of time playing League of Legends, an online Warcraft-style game. I started in March, and now I’ve got a maximum leveled account, and still play on a somewhat daily basis. It’s an absolute time-suck, and it’s done a sufficient job at peeling me away from playing XBOX or watching too many television programs. The appeals of the game are sure, it’s fun playing against live competition, but mostly the fact that I can play with several friends at the same time, and it’s never not a challenge, due to the expansive wealth of other players around the world.
I honestly thought I’d have more to write about, retrospecting the year as a whole, but I guess that doesn’t really appear to be the case. For some reason, I thought about how many times I drank myself into stupid hangovers, where I would end up puking. I think the tentative answer to that question is three times, but the bigger thing is that there was a point in my life, where I must had gone probably eight or nine years without puking; even longer before I started having hangovers from nights of excessive drunkery. Not to say that I’ve become a raging alcoholic by any means, but I didn’t really start drinking until I was 24. Even now, I only drink on social instances, and I’m overall still the lightweight.
I think I can say that I ate a lot of good food this year. Some of it was discovered right in my own backyard right here in Atlanta, but typically the foods eaten on the road while traveling tend to stand out the most. Ribs from St. Louis, St. Louis style pizza, all the Cuban food consumed whilst in Miami, good quality sandwiches or burgers or bratwursts from various regions where there might be minor league ballparks nearby. And the trip out to Arizona was practically a non-stop food bender, of eating tons of things, inspired by various ethnicities.
I suppose by this point, I’ve pretty much run out of words to put down. So I guess I’ll reiterate that 2011 was a pretty entertaining year as a whole, and I can’t say that I have a whole lot of complaints. The amount of white hair I have these days begs to differ, but then again I’m not exactly twenty-two years old anymore.
Here’s hoping that 2012 is a year just as good for everyone as 2011 seems to have been for me. I honestly thought I would have managed to snag a full-time job in 2011, but that unfortunately hasn’t been the case, so here’s hoping for better fortune in such regard the next. There’s nothing wrong with more Lol’in they hatin’, more good food, and hopefully more fun activities along the way.
My new year’s resolution is to cut back on the hookers, and try and do less blow.
