Tag: milestone

Life as a married man, brog post #1

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment
photo courtesy Matt Altmix

Let this be the first time I put in writing that I am now an officially married man, and this is the first time that I’ve had the time to sit down and write since both the wedding and the honeymoon.  After planning for both of these things for the better part of the last year, and then actually doing both things, I have to say that it feels kind of like having been on a train for a while and then having to adjust to the speed of walking all over again.  Literally, I’ve spent parts of the last two days sitting there in a dazed stupor, not having any clue of what to do next with, life in general. 

There are certainly things that should get done and need to get done, but I’m having a hard time bringing myself to make the first step in any direction to actually get started on doing anything really just yet.  It’ll all fix itself pretty quickly as daily life and routine begin to settle back down, but for the time being, it’s definitely taking some adjustment on getting back to normal life after finishing up a journey with some finishes in extreme rhythms.

As for the wedding, I have to say that I think the wife and I put on an excellent weekend for our celebration of union.  Trying to be as objective as I can for my own event, but I really genuinely believe that just about everything went so well and smooth, and I really couldn’t have asked for anything else,* as far as how the entire weekend went, from the arrival of friends and family, the rehearsal party to the wedding itself.

*except maybe some actual leftovers from our catering, which was completely obliterated by everyone, regardless of a few no-shows, resulting in nothing left for wifey and I after the wedding, but I guess that’s just another sign of success that we picked a good caterer who put out some irresistible food

I think it started with the location, and getting hitched in downtown Decatur made for a fantastic location for guests to stay where they were right next door to the venue, in an area where there were tons of restaurants and bars to eat and hang at, and a rarity in the Metro Atlanta area, somewhere that was MARTA accessible, meaning people could easily hop aboard the train and actually do tourist things.  Plus, the hotel was brand-spanking new, and the staff was outstanding beyond belief, and there’s little reason to believe the weekend wouldn’t have been as great as it was without them themselves.

Throughout the weekend, fewer things made me happier than seeing friends and family decisively doing their own things, and going out to eat or to the aquarium or the World of Coke, and making the most of their free time.  I took great pleasure and enjoyment in seeing people having a good time in Decatur and Atlanta, and not feeling like they were just humoring us, and like they actually got some time for themselves instead of feeling like they were just here for us.

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The last singles

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

If I can pull the curtain back a little bit, whenever I sit down and write, there’s no guarantee that the most recent thing I’m writing is actually the most recent thing that’s actually happening.  Especially these days, I often times come across things or thoughts that spark the want to write, but I just simply don’t have the time to write, because I’m always busy at work, and by the time I get home, I’m either too busy to write or too fried to write.

In times like those, what typically happens is that I have a cloud-based document where I jot down the date and the general theme of what was going to be written, and if there’s any links that I want to refer to, that too.  And when I have the time and the motivation to do some writing, those are the things that I try to tackle first.  Typically, I don’t like the queue to grow too big, because then it gives me anxiety and a feeling of being worthless as someone who likes to write.  But there are exceptions to the queue, where I start writing about something in the true present, because usually there’s some degree of time sensitivity to where it’s not something that I can go back and write about retroactively.  At the time I’m writing this, there are three posts queued up that I still want to write about when I get the time.

Right now, is one of those moments.  Because the last few days, I’ve been coming to the realization that a lot of the things I’m doing, are the last time I’m doing them as a single guy.  Yes, melodramatic me is actually writing about the slow farewell to single, unattached life, because I’m two days from entering the wedded bliss of holy matrimony, and getting married.  What started out as mythical gf became mythical fiancé, and now I’m about to have a mythical wifey, and I’m actually going to be somebody’s husband.  Sucks to be them!

But anyway, it’s a lot of little things that I’m doing that I’m realizing are the last times I’m doing them as a single person.  All throughout the week, I’ve had my final chest and tris day as a single guy.  My last time running on the treadmill as a single guy.  Today was my last bis-shoulders-hamstrings day.  As the weekend progresses, I’ll have my last meals and drinks as a single person, and then when I’m at the altar, likely watching down at mythical fiancé coming down the aisle, probably looking radiant and beautiful, I’ll be ticking down my last minutes and seconds as a single person.

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I lost a mythical gf

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

On this day, I no longer have a girlfriend. 

I have a fiancée now.

Marriage is one of those things that I always imagined would be in my future.  Even though jaded people like to claim that it’s an archaic institution or something that doesn’t really mean much these days, the eternal romantic in me always saw it as something that I figured I’d want to attain in my life.  I’ve watched couples that I’ve always thought were great, mothers and fathers of children, and even my own parents dissolve and divorce which I’d be lying didn’t give me concerns for pursuing it myself, but it just seems like one of those things that always had a place in my life, personally.

And fortunately, I’ve had an accommodating partner throughout this journey towards marriage, and the once-mythical gf has stuck with me throughout the last four years, and kind of made it something of a no-brainer that we just might work out in the long haul.  I’m lucky to have a girl in my life that loves and accepts me, is supportive of my pursuits, and encourages me to be the best person that I can be, and I’m pretty stoked and excited to go through the awkward transition of calling her “my girl-I mean fiancée,” and eventually, my wife.

It’s funny because despite the fact that it took four years to get to this point, this is something that has been on my mind for a way lot longer.  But I didn’t want to be one of those people who were just giddy to be in a relationship, and rush straight into marriage, without really knowing their better halves, and despite the fact that I was wondering if this could go in this direction, I always erred on the side of steady, to let things grow, feel things out, and really be more and more sure of, well everything.

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Is Puffy eight years old?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

[2020 note]: I just wanted to acknowledge that this was the 2,000th post to my brog. The thought crossed my mind after I had back-filled all of the original brog’s posts, which was roughly 1,620~ posts, so given the fact that I had nearly five years of posts to retroactively post, I knew that eventually I was going to hit the 2,000 post mark.

Naturally, if I were posting in real time, I’d probably have made a dedicated post to the milestone, but instead I thought it’d be entertaining to see where on the roulette wheel 2,000 would end up.

Figures it would be on a fluff post like this one, lol.

That’s actually a rhetorical question; we all know he’s got the social intelligence that of an eight-year old, and the “uhhh i was just kidding guys” excuse is pretty much a prime example of such.

Kidding my ass.  Didds saw the backlash from his dumb little publicity stunt, and from the real Brother Love himself, and immediately backed the fuck off.  I’m really hoping Prichard and/or the WWE had a legal lock on the Brother Love name, and threatened legal action unless he backed off immediately; but knowing the way the WWE works today, I like to believe that Triple H or someone up in the company gave him the opportunity to keep the legal part hush-hush, and in exchange, Puffs will owe the WWE something in the future.

Let’s just say, it won’t be at all surprising if we see Puffy on WWE television in near to distant future, and we’ll probably know why it’s the case.

Either way, Puffs got what he wanted, which was attention, and hopefully now that he’s gotten his fix, he can get back to lording over and producing over those much more talented than him to make decent hip hop.  Hopefully he’ll know in the future not to fuck with the real Brother Love, and at least cross-reference the internet for two seconds before he decides to change his name to something stupid in like five years.

But let the record show that Puff Daddy jobbed to a non-wrestler, in Brother Love.  This is kind of better than Jay-Z jobbing to Diamond Dallas Page.

Your attention please

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

With the month of March coming to a close, I just wanted to take a moment to go ahead and pat myself on the back, for a month of exemplary brogging.  And by “exemplary,” I really mean “frequent,” but I just wanted to use the word exemplary, because it sounds so much more prestigious and accomplishing.

And really, I do feel sort of accomplished, because if there’s one neat-o thing about WordPress is that it keeps a running count of the number of posts I make each month.  Turns out that through March, I made more posts than there were days in the month; and March is one of those months with thirty-one days, so it’s not like I’m bragging about February or anything.

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1,000

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Typically, there’s nothing special at all about particular numbers, especially when it comes to recreational hobby blogging.  But I’m a fan of baseball, where numbers make the world go round, and where nice round ones are championed and celebrated at every opportunity, and I’m also a pretty sentimental guy who often times puts more stock into something than really should be deemed necessary, like nice round numbers.

But anyway, this is a very special post to me, because it happens to be the 1,000th post I’ve made to my beloved brog.  Now I’ve been brogging a lot longer, since there were about nine years prior to moving it to a WordPress format where I was doing it prehistorically, but since WP is nice enough to do all the number crunching for me, and display it in a prominent area in its dashboard, I’ve always been cognizant to the ever-increasing numbers throughout the past three years and change as I’ve made my best efforts to try to post something on a workday basis.

I genuinely do take a good deal of pride in this superficial number, because frankly, I’m hard pressed to find anyone like me who blogs as a side hobby, remotely close to dedicated as I do.  Obviously, I’m not saying that these people don’t exist, but I sure as hell don’t know any.  I hate to say that I have no faith in others, but the truth of the matter is that I shrug and mentally make bets in my head whenever people start a blog, to how soon it will be before they ultimately abandon it; I really hate to sound so pessimistic about it, but frankly nobody’s proven to me the ability to go half a year, much less over three years, before their posting weans off, the novelty is gone, and then the desire goes outright kaput.  I’m not criticizing people, and I’m not blaming people, because recreational blogging isn’t necessarily hard, but it’s pretty unfulfilling if it feels like nobody is reading, you’re not getting paid for it, or you simply run into writers’ blocks.

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One Year.

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

365 days ago, I officially moved totfc.net into a WordPress blog format. The main reasoning behind the move was that I felt that I was losing touch with my writing, mostly because the process was redundant and had become arduous, and I felt some obligation to make long and thoughtful posts in order to get my point across.  When it felt like it was becoming a chore, I knew change was essential in order to restore order to my enjoyment of writing.  A year ago, a new beginning, began.

2001 posts: 74 (not full year, either)
2002 posts: 81
2003 posts: 75
2004 posts: 73
2005 posts: 41
2006 posts: 55
2007 posts: 34
2008 posts: 19
2009 posts: 28

As you can see, as the years passed, so did my desire to really post anything to the old site.  In the span of the last 365 days, I have posted to my new brog 225 times, effectively more than the last five years combined. Granted, the depth, quality, and integrity of the last year’s posts might not be nearly as “meaty” as some of my previous years’ posts, but I can say without much question, that over the last year, writing hasn’t felt a chore to me anymore, which is a wonderful feeling.

It’s not necessarily how much I’ve posted that’s refreshing, but also the means in which I’ve posted.  I’ve made posts from seven different states, three different time zones, from my PC, various work computers, my old laptop, my Android phone, and most frequently, my trusty netbook.  Post contents have been heartfelt and thoughtful, sometimes just a link that amuses me, or random pictures from when I have been traveling on my baseball trips.  Some have been negative in connotation, with me pouring my ronery heart out, or fuming over my inability to secure a real job.  But all of it has been relatively close to the moment, and a more accurate reflection of my actual emotions and thoughts, as opposed to me having time to stew and think things through, and deliberate my choice of words when I had the time at home to do so.  When something crosses my mind that seems worthy to write about, I literally have the means to essentially get it down, just about almost anywhere.  Even if it’s not worthy, I can brog my heart out too.

Needless to say, switching my website to a WordPress brog was the best decision I made last year.  Writing means a lot to me, and when it began to take over my particular presence on the intertubes, it only made sense to adapt my online real estate to accommodate such outlet.  With one year in the books, I’m hoping to keep this going and I realize at this point, I’ve pretty much been doing this for the last decade, which is kind of surreal, knowing that I’ve got quite a bit of personal writing up online for that long.