Here we go

All right. As promised, here's my look into the list. As usual, just hold the cursor over a number if you want to know what the list item is.

1. This item was originally about me thinking I was going to earn a living at poker. Then when I decided that I didn't want to earn a living playing poker, I crossed the item off the list. I've removed the 'seriously' from the 'play poker seriously' that it was because I just want to play poker. If I get good enough to earn some money, cool. If not, I still get to have fun playing poker. . .

2. I've removed the publishing emphasis from this item. I think that I've really struggled with my writing for the past four or five years because toward the beginning of that time is when I started telling people that I was going to be a writer, and I then started writing thinking 'what would a publisher have to say about this?' and 'would my literary theory professor be impressed with how I used this particular device?' Now I want to just write. If I just write and keep writing, I will more than likely produce something that I feel is publishable. When that happens, I'll start worrying about the world of publishing. I know I've made similar claims in the past. But now I'm actually going to stick to it. Right now, I'm writing a story about dragons. I don't know if there's a big market for stories about dragons. I'm sure there aren't a lot of college literature classes discussing stories about dragons. But I want to write a story about dragons. So I am.

3. Number three once was 'start a blog.' I've now changed that to simply 'blog.' That means update the blog, but it also means (to me anyway) learn ways to improve this blog. I've ordered a book on blogging to do just that. Also, since I've broadened the scope of this item, I feel the old number 25 (look up HTML tags to update this blog) fits under the new number 3. So I've removed the old 25 and then bumped all the following items up one slot.

4. Um. . . yeah. . . not so much yet. . .

5. Nope. I'm still not a swimmer.

6. I've changed my focus from earning a black belt to just studying martial arts. This change is actually quite huge because I'm not really firmly rooted in any one location yet. When I was focusing on becoming a black belt, I would tell myself not to bother with a martial arts class because I would probably be moving within a year and all the work I put in toward earning a black belt would be lost and I would have to start all over somewhere else. But now that I just want to study martial arts, I can just take classes (there are two in town that I know of). If I stay long enough to earn a black belt, cool. If not, I'll have a better foundation for when I start at another dojo.

7. Just a minor change on the wording of this. It used to be 'have kids.' See my results for number 4 if you're curious about my progress.

8. I thought I would have accomplished this one by now. I almost did, in a cheating sort of way. I've actually been keeping an eye on rentals in the area. My hope is to get moved out this month. Working at the paper, I'm not making enough money to support myself, but I'm actually committing myself to stay in town for probably the next year at this point, unless a good opportunity arises. In January I'm going to start taking classes. I'll study to get an advertising certificate and a public relations certificate because a lot of the writing jobs that I've seen posted are in communications departments and advertising departments. I think having a year and a half writing for a paper under my belt coupled with those two certificates will help me to get that type of job. Why am I discussing this under my move out item? Because when I start taking classes I'll be able to get financial aid and therefore be able to afford a place to move out to.

9. I've been meaning to volunteer over at my niece's preschool. But it starts very, very early, so I haven't done that yet. I have been getting myself up earlier and earlier, however. I think I should be ready to volunteer pretty soon. I've also been meaning to volunteer for the local non-profit art store. I've been meaning to build houses for low-income families. I've been meaning to. . . stop procrastinating I suppose. Maybe volunteering and finding a place to live will be my main activities this month. I think they should be.

10. There is no good, active verb for practicing yoga that I know of. But that's what I want to do. There's actually a yoga school here in town. Imagine that. The town I used to refer to as hickville, the town where the local paper (my paper) regularly features pictures of slaughtered bucks, the town with auto-parts shop after auto-parts shop but not one decent coffee shop, has a yoga school. I'll contact the school soon (what nation does that remind you of? oh yeah, procrasti-nation).

11. I traveled some during the summer. But not much recently.

12. I changed 'pay the bills' to 'work.' I like my job at the paper. I wish I could work more. But when I'm working I have a good time. I don't know how this job looks as far as long-term considerations are concerned, but I like it for now. It's work. It's experience. It's stuff.

13. Yeah, my nerves still give me some trouble. I have found, however, that the more I do and the more I'm around people, the better my nerves are. I don't get anxious about working or being around people or doing stuff when I've recently been working or been around people or been doing stuff. It's when I've withdrawn from things for a few days that my nerves start to get to me (and also when I have to speak in front of an audience). I realized this during my first few weeks working at the paper. My hours were even sparser back then, and sometimes I would go a week or more between times going to work. I found that it was taking me a long time to get past the nerves of working in a new place because every time I started to build up some comfort by being there, I would forget about that comfort because I would not be there for a week or so. So I think just doing stuff will help my nerves.

14. I changed this one from the whole open mic thing because I don't really want to write a song and sing at open mic. I just want to play guitar. If I feel like writing a song, I will. If a bunch of people are around and there's a guitar and I want to play something, I will. I don't want to be a singer/songwriter. I just want to play the guitar. And I do on most days.

15. I'm not sure what to make of this one. So I left it blank.

16. My head's good. I still have some headaches. But not every day. Not even every week it seems. I don't know what I'm doing, but my head's good.

17. I changed this one from exercise to run. I thought exercise was a little redundant when I already have practice yoga, study martial arts, and learn to swim on the list. But I wanted an item on the list for running because I've started up with that again. I'm not running so I can finish in the top five of a 5k. I'm not running so I can say that I ran five miles in 36 minutes. I'm running because it feels good to run. Right now, I'm running for a half an hour a day. I go about two miles, which is really slow, but I'm enjoying it more than when I wore myself out running two miles in 18 minutes. I'll probably increase the speed gradually. But for now I'm okay with just running slowly.

18. I'm getting to know some of the people at work. But I'm still not meeting people all that much. Right now I'm using the fact that I'm living with my parents as an excuse to not go out and try to meet people. Which is stupid. Which I know.

19. I changed this from 'learn to cook' to simply 'cook.' I know how to cook. I just don't. But I like to eat food that I've cooked far more than I like to eat the food that some teenager has assemblylined next to the frialator.

20. I think I've done better with this item than any other on the list. When I get down on myself, this one makes me feel better.

21. Originally this item was dedicated to getting in touch with piwok. While I do regret not having a list item dedicated entirely to piwok, I realize that there are a lot of people who I need to do a better job of staying in touch with. So number 21 was changed. Sorry, piwok.

22. This used to be 'eliminate mindless distractions.' Not too far in to the process of doing just that, I realized how important mindless distractions can be in moderation. The new version of this item is the actual outcome I was hoping to achieve with the old version.

23. I wasn't sure about keeping this one on the list. Sometimes I do miss performing. But not that much. And sometimes not at all. I don't know if it really deserves to be on the list or not. But what the heck? It's not hurting anybody being here.

24. Yeah. I'm not doing well on this one at all. I had a mouse in my room probably a month ago. I'm certain that the messiness of my room - defined mostly by piles of clothes and a few stacks of paper - was not the cause of this mouse's presence. But I'm also certain that it was indeed my candy wrapper that I saw him dragging toward the gap in the wall.

25. I'm not pacing, I'm just making sure that the carpet is worn down evenly.

26. My writing, my running, this blog, are all challenges to me.

27. Not before number 5.

28. I'm usually pretty good at this one. Usually.

29. Used to be 'Don't shy away from mistakes. Learn from them." I just changed it to something a little less fulghumy.

Okay, that's enough for now. Thanks for reading (20).