First of all, thanks to you well-wishers about the birth­day. I appre­ci­ate it. And you know what, I even thank those of you who didn't say any­thing — I'll save some money on Christ­mas cards this way.

There always seems to be an arbi­trary ques­tion that some­one (usu­ally a fam­ily mem­ber) will ask you on the anniver­sary of your birth, and that is, "Do you feel a year older?"

What the hell does that even mean? *shrug* I don't know.

I believe I'm in a much bet­ter place than I was a year ago. And I get very intro­spec­tive every year around the time of my birth­day because I think to myself, "Okay, great. What's dif­fer­ent now?"

I really fuck­ing hate that ques­tion, but it's not because I don't pos­sess the abil­ity. That's not true. I'm quite good at ana­lyz­ing peo­ple and pick­ing apart at their attrib­utes — and as with any­one who does that on a reg­u­lar basis (many of whom are my friends) can tell you, everything's fine until we have to do it to our­selves. Hav­ing my ana­lyt­i­cal beam turned inward almost hurts a bit.

And yet it hap­pens every year. The real rea­son I've been quiet here lately is that this hits me like clock­work. And even though I was taught to read a cal­en­dar sev­eral years ago, it some­how comes as a sur­prise and just throws me for a loop every damn time.

So I've decided to just keep a list and update it as time goes on. It may not be the best way to do this, but it sure as hell is the eas­i­est. I can't spend as much time as I'd like to write about this, because 1) I've already spent too much time just think­ing about it, 2) prep for dragon*con is com­ing up fast and furi­ous, and 3) I've got more entries to write in the next few days. So there.

The Life To-Do List^™: Ver­sion 22

• I real­ize that I can again enjoy a job with a set struc­ture. Not to say that it doesn't have its prob­lems, but as a friend recently pointed out, it's actu­ally help­ful to be able to pay the bills and such. (For those of you who might be won­der­ing, there are rea­sons why there haven't been posts doc­u­ment­ing the insan­ity over at the T-Journal. Trust me, there are good rea­sons for this. I may delve into that after dragon*con.)
• My prob­lems with rela­tion­ships are get­ting eas­ier to deal with. I took a hit around just this time last year with H.S., and it's taken a while to bounce back. But you know what? I've done just that. (Although I think that by this point, Super­ball should be pay­ing me to be their spokesperson.)
• Many of my friends have caught the getting-in-shape bug. Mean­while, in the last year, I've gained two waist sizes. I really just need to get off my ass and stop mak­ing excuses for why I don't exer­cise. See also: I need to eat a lit­tle bit more healthy. I know that I have the power to do both of these eas­ily, it's just time to fark­ing do it. I really want to kick this in after we return from dragon*con.
• Slightly related to #1, there are some out­stand­ing finan­cial com­mit­ments that I need to take care of. These have been loom­ing over my head for some time now, and like the exer­cise thing, it's some­thing that needs to just get done. I'll be rest­ing much eas­ier when I can check these off my list.
• The Big Red Machine (read: my '91 Pon­tiac Grand Am) is really on its last legs. Some type of sen­sor needs to be replaced on the car, and it's decently expen­sive. I would have fixed this months ago, but I have a reser­va­tion about it. In short, the mechanic who diag­nosed the prob­lem told me that even if this part is replaced, that may not fix the prob­lem. So I'm stuck with either a) pur­chas­ing the replace­ment part and cross­ing my fin­gers, or b) div­ing back into the waters of leas­ing a newer car. I still haven't made up my mind. I'll fig­ure it out at some point.

Okay, so it seems like a rather short list. But they'll keep me busy for a while. As for now, it's back to dragon*con planning.

Glo­ri­ous life, isn't it?