Perspective
So as I’ve mentioned on here, I’m going through all my old blog posts one by one, recording information about them in an Excel spreadsheet, and fixing my “category” tags, as I have added a few more that seem appropriate additions to the 35 original categories I had (for example, I’ve added a “walking” category so that I can move all my walking-related posts out of the “health” category).
I’m currently in the middle of my Year 4, which corresponds to October 2009. What was I doing in October 2009? Starting grad school at UBC.
This made me realize something. My first round of undergrad took up only the first 3.5 years of my nearly 20 years of blogging. That is an incredibly short amount of time. In my head, I always think of that first round of undergrad as being a very significant portion of my life time-wise – probably because of all the stuff that happened during it – but at this stage of my life, it really was just a small blip.
Which is weird to think about.
Like, I’ve been living in Calgary for over 10 years now and that seems like a shorter amount of time than Undergrad Round I.
It’s weird how our brains frame things like that, isn’t it?
Do you have a period in your life that feels like it lasted a lot longer than it actually did?
Attention:
I am garbage.
That is all.
How Badly Do I Want to Jump Into Traffic?
Sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo badly.
Squishy Mushy Fee-Fees
I was thinking about this today on my walk: is there somebody in your life (or who used to be in your life) whose very existence just…makes you happy? Puts you at ease? Brings you peace? Is there a person that you can just briefly think about and suddenly feel 100% better about everything?
A “comfort human,” if you will? I don’t think this necessarily has to be the person you love the most, or even a person you love in a familial or romantic way. It’s just some person who just dulls the angry noises in your head the instant you think about them. You don’t even have to see them or talk to them. Just thinking about them sends a wave of tranquility through your being.
Do you have a comfort human?
I do. And, surprisingly, it’s not my husband and it’s not my mom.
It’s Sean. I don’t know what it is about him and our relationship, but he’s someone that I can think of and immediately just feel better about existence. I can be having the worst day until I conjure up a picture of him in my head – or even just the sound of his voice – and I feel more grounded and less OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD. It’s almost like I can rationalize the existence of good in the universe because the universe was able to create him.
Is that weird? Creepy? Both?
Sooo….what’s going to kill us first?
Climate change (in all its wonderful forms)?
Microplastics?
AI?
Trump?
That asteroid that’s supposed to hit us in a few years?
Covid?
The after-effects of everyone getting Covid because NO ONE SEEMS TO CARE ANYMORE?
Bird flu?
Whatever the next pandemic is going to be?
World War III?
Whatever it’ll be, I hope it will be quick.
*frustrated, unrelenting screaming*
I want to diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiie
Let’s Leave 2024 in 2024
Today is the darkest day of the year, which is fitting for reflecting on this garbage can of a year.
Like, on a surface level, it wasn’t bad. It was good, actually. Tenure, ultramarathons, record walking distance (or at least I’m assuming I’ll hit it unless my legs fall off in the next few days), discovering a love of watercoloring, seeing a ridiculous aurora borealis show in May, getting to teach my ASHA semester, all that jazz.
Good stuff.
But the bad stuff? There was so much more bad stuff; it just wasn’t as…visible.
I don’t want to talk in as much detail about it because it’s all I’ve been thinking about today and I’m already all worked up about it, but let’s just say that this year was defined by failure.
Failure after failure after failure after failure.
It was very hard to get through parts of this year, in part because I couldn’t really talk about half this crap and in part because it sounds so stupid when I did talk about it that it just made everything worse.
So yeah. Surface level, 2024 was great. Below-surface, 2024 rivals 2011, which was probably the worst year I’ve ever had.
Fun times.
Let’s leave it behind, huh?
I Got Everything I Ever Wanted and Now I’m Sad: The Claudia Mahler Story
WHY DO I SELF-SABOTAGE EVERY SINGLE TIME I HAVE EVEN THE MOST MINUTE CHANCE AT HAPPINESS
WHY WHY WHY
PSA:
I suck.
Don’t Underestimate Misery.
Just sayin’.
I Ruin Everything.
That is all.
Here is a list of things I’m good at:
1. Nothing.
Random Things I Miss from Childhood and Teenagerhood
- The Pizza Hut Book-It! program
- Birthday parties where the whole class was invited and we got goodie bags of cheap and amazing trinkets
- Holding birthday parties at the University Inn where we’d get a poolside room (and I’d get to give out goodie bags of cheap and amazing trinkets)
- My dad’s condo
- Going to my dad’s on the weekend (except for going to church, haha, and only after about age 13)
- Going to my dad’s after school during junior high and being an absolute nuisance in the Yahoo! chatrooms
- Pre-2006 internet
- Trolling the hell out of people on Yahoo! Chat
- Fruitopia
- Opening presents at my mom’s on Christmas Eve and opening presents at my dad’s on Christmas
- Doing all my dumb artsy “films” with my mom’s camcorder
A Thought:
The only reason I’m not a doomsday prepper is because I don’t want to survive through a doomsday event.
2024: The Year of “All of Your Insecurities are Valid and Here’s Why”
Also:
- 2024: The Year of “Your Best Isn’t Good Enough”
- 2024: The Year of “All That Hard Work and Nobody Cares”
- 2024: The Year of “Are You Feeling Inadequate? You Should Be!”
- 2024: The Year of “I’m Sorry I’m Human and Want a Little External Validation”
- 2024: The Year of “Getting That Thing You’ve Been Working Towards for Eight Years Isn’t Going to Make You Happy”
- 2024: “It’s Not Imposter Syndrome If You’re Actually an Imposter”
But, y’know, don’t tell anybody any of this stuff. ‘Cause then they’ll just get upset with you because you’re not feeling the way they think you should feel.
I am sad.
Very, very, very sad.
That is all.
I’ve the Sadness
I am painfully nostalgic for pre-COVID times.
Anyone else?
I AM CANADIAN!
Yes, you read that right! I took my Citizenship Oath this afternoon and am now officially a Canadian citizen.
The citizenship ceremony took place entirely on Zoom, which was an interesting experience, because there were about 80 other people/families in the meeting in total. I don’t know if everyone was from Alberta or if they were all scattered around, but the judge that performed the ceremony was in Montreal, so who knows!
The whole thing took about two and a half hours; most of the time was spent waiting for the clerk to do one-on-one meetings with everyone, during which we had to cut up our Permanent Resident cards on camera. Then we all came together, said the Oath, sang the national anthem, and became Canadians.
(I had to pledge my allegiance to King Charles and all his successors, which was pretty wild.)
So no longer do I live in a foreign country. Canada is my country!
EVERYTHING SUCKS
THAT’S IT, THAT’S THE BLOG
The odds are that we / will probably be / all dead
I’m calling it now: humanity has about ten more years before life starts getting very difficult.
Extreme weather affecting large swaths of the world’s population. Heat waves beyond human survivability. Extreme water shortages. Excessive forest fires. New diseases and illnesses brought on by climate change.
I just think things are going to get really bad and are going to do so a lot faster than people think.
Ten years. At most. So get ready.
WOOOOOOOOO
I AM SAD!
I Met the Sky
What did YOU do today?
Eigenblogger 