Month three of my experiment is finished. I have learned many many things like I am a terrible person. I started out trying to write a witty month of the silly resolutions that I would make but would never keep, but as I wrote each one I realized I could modify them into a more moderate incarnation.  I still doubt I will keep many of them. I know I won’t try to cook a new thing every week. I know. I will probably keep the resolution to work out and eat better. I will never seek out pop culture unless I am given a reason to. I am always going to be a foul-mouthed, sarcastic, loud woman. I might just have to be okay with it. Next month is going to be fun AND I can go back into denial about being a good human being. YaY denial. I love denial.

I wrote yesterday I was going to enjoy a real life weekend and I have. Tina and her family have worn me clean out. I think I am going to go surf the net.

I realize how terrible uncool I am. In some ways I am actually sort of proud of this. I turn the radio station to the pop music cool kids station and I am generally like “what the frel is this crap?.”

The only reason I have heard Katy Perry’s “Kissed a Girl” is because I was curious if it was a remake of the Jill Sobule’s classic that had Fabio in the video. I have yet to see the video for “California Girls” because the song is so insipid and inane that it makes me want to punch a puppy and the only reason I am aware of “Hot and Cold” or whatever it is is because she slutted it up with Elmo. I haven’t seen one of her actual music videos, though the idea of the pastry bra is mildly intriguing, but so far not enough to get me to be willing to youtube one of her videos .

All I know about Ke$ha is that she is dirty. My uninformed theory is that she is like the American Amy Winehouse without the talent. I think I might have accidentally heard one of her songs on the internet because it was in the background of a funny Star Trek video.

I am aware that there is a song about a G6. I think I have heard at least part of it because I can hear “Like a g6, like a g6′ going through my head when I think of it. I am not entirely sure if I have heard the entire song or if I made that shit up in my head. I did not even know what a G6 was until a facebook friend and my sister educated me that it is a jet.  I have no clue who performs the song, I am just aware of it’s existence.

Okay I know what a Snooki is, kind of. I am aware that she is on a show on the MTV called “Jersey Shore” but I have never seen said show. I know what most of the cast looks like and the general gist of the show because I surf the interwebz. I can pick Snooki out of a line up and I know that she looks like a trailer park trash beauty queen made sweet sweaty love to a oompa-loompa ala Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. I don’t think she is ugly by any means, just orange and over done. Still I have never seen the show.

So in other words pop culture flies by me.  Like I said, I am not too upset by this but it does interfere with relating to normal people sometimes.  I think maybe it would behoove me to start doing internet research on one pop culture reference that I simply do not get a week.  Maybe one week watch an episode of “Jersey Shore” then another week type in a music artist name into youtube and watch a few of their videos.  Honestly, the only way this will be funny is if I take requests and write on it.

I will make you guys a deal. Leave me suggestions either here or on my facebook page, my personal page or the website’s fan page,  and I will pick one a week and write about it on Monday which is normally one of the two days I don’t write. If I don’t get suggestions I might not do it, because lets face it, I am frightened by pop culture and I am lazy. I do enjoy mocking things though. Lets see what happens!

I have been cooking since I was fairly young. My mom thought it was important that my sister and I knew how to feed ourselves if she was gone for whatever reason so she started teaching us to cook in the microwave as soon as we could hit the buttons. (Just so you know, microwave scrambled eggs are beyond yucky.)  I won’t say I can’t cook, or even that I dislike cooking, I am just not as good at it as I would like to be.

I make some dishes really well. My mashed potatoes are fan-freaking-tastic. I make some chicken dishes really well. Things from boxes or mixes generally are within my grasp. I can feed myself and others every night with some sort of proficiency but I have very few things I make that are actually really impressive.  I think it would be super cool to be make full meals of finely crafted food.

I am never going to be the kind of woman who will spend hours every day lovingly preparing a four course meal for her family. I am not the high heels and pearl necklace type of girl. I am okay with sometimes a good meal is going to be shake ‘n’ bake pork chops, yellow rice, and a bagged salad.  I don’t believe my value as a woman is at all based on my abilities to make a homemade pie with the perfect lattice crust. My self worth will never be based on the juiciness of my roast.  I am not just that interested in cooking and baking. I salute those who are. I read some of the stuff my facebook friends post and I get sparks of envy that they can make such fantastic things.  I am not that person.

I do enjoy doing things for people I love though and preparing a great meal for my friends and family is something I find satisfying. Every once in awhile I like to be able to feed the people I care about something I took time and made to be special. There is something about that that appeals to the momma bear side of my personality.

I also think I want to be a better cook for the same reason I want to learn basic auto mechanics.  I think there are certain things everyone should know about the world around them. It pisses me off that I can’t point out a fan belt from a piston and if something goes wrong with my car I have to rely on someone else. I loathe being that woman on the side of the road locked in her car dialing her cell phone.  Great food is the same way for me. I want to be able to go to gatherings and bring something other than mashed freaking taters. I mean my taters are good, but being a one trick pony isn’t my thing.

So I should resolve to try and learn at least one new recipe a week. I could even resolve to post the results on this site because I know I will be more likely to do things if I feel like it is for my site. I should and I could but I don’t know that I will.

I have mixed feelings about today’s resolution: to be more positive.

I don’t think I am an overly negative person. I honestly believe most people are good and care about other people, I just think they were not taught empathy. I think most of the rudeness and inconsideration in our modern society is caused because most people don’t take the time to think how their actions effect other people. I believe that the majority of people would treat their fellow man better if they had their kindergarten lessons still floating around in their head. Sometimes when I see an adult behaving badly I want to ask them how they would feel if they saw a child act the same way.

Now I don’t believe everyone is good and shiny and will always put the rest of the world ahead of them. I think humans have certain needs that have to be met before they can feel stable enough to start caring about everyone else.  Someone who is starving will do whatever they can to get available food.  I know if my kids were starving and someone had a sandwich that would save my children, I would do whatever it took to get that sandwich for my children. It sounds brutal but I think most people feel the same way. Anyway, I honestly believe that if people have basic needs met and realize how their actions affect people they will do what they think is right and treat people with some modicum of respect.

I also think I am generally positive about life. I have the strange belief that sometimes life sucks but there are also times when life is unbelievably sweet and you just have to hang on through the bad to get to the good. I also genuinely believe that happiness is a choice. Sometime things go to hell and there is no way around it but you can decide on whether you want to wallow in the bad things and get defeated or stop and look for a way out. Our only real control is how we react to things.  My life view is not all puppies and tulips but I try to live my life being grateful for what is good and trying to fix what isn’t.

With all of that said about how positive I am, I think people can be incredibly dumb, especially people in a group.

Nothing scares me more than a mass of people who think they are right and everyone else is wrong. (Yes, I know I am being a bit hypocritical here by saying I think I am right about mass groups of people being wrong.) When people surround themselves with only like people they have a tendency to develop a blindness and insensitivity. Everyone is guilty of this. Every religion, political party, race, gender, sports fan club, music groupies, everyone gets convinced they are right when in a group and unfortunately their conviction of their rightness leads them to believe that others are wrong and bad.  They lose perspective and queue badness.

People also act badly in groups. Mob mentality frightens me.

Another way I might need some work being positive  is that I try to be cautiously positive. Great things are happening in my life right now and I am excited and thankful but I am also trying not to be blind to threats. I don’t know if this is smart or if I am just keeping myself from fully enjoying things.  I don’t really know. I do know that I am going to be excited about meeting my handsome hunk of dork in March. I am just going to be excited and not look for thorns. If thorns show up, I will deal with them then.

I am going to let you in on a little secret…. I lack focus and I am not always as productive as I wish I was.

Shocking right?

So today my resolution is to be more productive. I want to explain something early on in this post: it is now 4:30pm and I normally try to have my posts written and posted by noon. I am currently in an internet chat program with my boyfriend and one of our friends and I have World of Warcraft minimized. Now I know I should be in a quiet room with no distractions. I also know this will never work because I get even more distracted when I only have one thing going on. I know I would have never gotten through my college grammar class without the all night diner with drunks and crazy crack coffee. I would sit at my booth with my ruler and grammar book and diagram sentences while takes frequent breaks to stare at the drunks be drunk. I would try and do my homework in a quiet room and I would end up watching T.V or getting on the internet.  I figure now that often quick zone out breaks are far better than long breaks that keep me from ever getting something done.  Its sad that I am so sadly aware of my own limitations I am.

So I should play less WoW, surf the net less, and other slovenly things to do more things like clean or write or save the world.

Part of my reason for playing WoW has a lot to do with a tall, handsome, hunk of dork and so I don’t regret playing so much.  I also see no problem with playing instead of sitting in front of the T.V. People get so self righteous over people playing video games after work when they just watch sit down on their couch and watch whatever reality t.v monstrosity is currently the cool thing to watch.  I am sorry that I play a computer game instead of watching “Dancing with Convicted Felons” or “One Man in a House Full of Slutty Chicks.” Somehow I will have to live with myself.

So if my problem isn’t that I play WoW, what exactly am I griping about? That I hang out in WoW even when I am bored and even when I know I should be doing other things that will help my future.  I need to go back to the model I was working with a few weeks ago where I only logged on when I had everything done. I don’t even think my problem is with WoW I think my problem is with my hunk of dork. I want to spend time with him. God I am such a girl.

So here is the plan: no getting onto the computer until I have my errands, housework, other business, etc. done for the day. There will be no logging on to WoW until that days blog post is done.  Maybe I can do that?

*Snort*

So my life took some strange turns in this past year and I ended up here. I felt like I was wasting my life being a part time library assistant. I liked my job but it was far from satisfying. I worked with some really amazing people and had some interesting experiences but I knew I couldn’t do that for much longer. I escaped for school but I knew my plans for going back to school for computer training were not really what I wanted and fate stepped in on me there. I ended up doing nothing. Doing nothing is not good for me. I am not happy with nothing. Other people are not happy with me doing nothing and they let me know. I started this blog and told people I would keep up with it. (Yes, someone pointed out to me that I come up with good ideas all the time that I never follow through with. I am half way through month three and still going with it.)

I realized that I was really happy writing. I have been told since fourth grade that I need to be a writer but for some reason it never sunk in. I think its because it is one of those things that people always say they want to do but reality always sinks in so I had subconsciously decided to skip the ‘working for the dream part’ and went straight to the ‘giving up and trying for something more realistic’ part. Also, writing never seemed hard for me or like I was doing anything particularly special even though my entire life people had encouraged me. In short, I was to stubborn to listen to other people and too lacking on confidence to give it a go.

Month one of thematic experiment changed that. I realized people read my stuff and not just because they felt the need to out of loyalty, but because they enjoyed it. Since then I realized I wanted to be a professional writer when I grow up. Now I write almost daily on this site with either this blog or my WoW blog and I have even started a book.

Now here comes the resolution part:

I have always been too intimidated to start a book because I never felt like I had plot or sufficient ideas to write a good book. By the way, I do see how dumb this thought process is and if someone had told me they weren’t doing something they wanted to do because they didn’t think they would be good at it I would bop them over the head. Anyway, I solved this by deciding to write a not good book. I am not planning to write utter crap but I am setting to write a decent science fiction novel with a romantic subplot.  I am not expecting to turn out world changing sci-fi, more like literary junk food. I think I can handle that.

Now if I were going to make a crazy resolution it would be to write eight hours a day, five days a week like I was a real grown up writer with a real grown up writing job. This will NEVER happen. My brain wanders way too much and after an hour of writing I have to take spazz out breaks. I barely make it through one of these posts without opening another browser tab and surfing the net for a few minutes. Okay, so I do open another tab and surf the internet for a bit quite often while writing these.  After an hour and a half of writing my brain lulls so thoroughly that I feel the need to nap. I resist (most of the time) but I can’t see myself sitting here for eight straight hours churning out the great next American sci-fi junk food. Not happening.

So I need to come up with something more reasonable that takes my goldfish-like attention span into account. Maybe I should schedule in two two-hour blocks of writing broken up by errands, exercise, WoW, or other things. I think I could handle two hours of writing at a time and maybe I would actually get something written.  If I am not careful I am going to end up drawing up a schedule. Maybe I should ask Angela about how to do that whole being organized and having a schedule thing.

So when it comes down to it, I am a bit of a bleeding heart. The ASPCA commercials have made me cry and the images of the kids with flies around their eyeballs rip my heart to shreds.  Deep in my soul I have a desire to do good. If I can afford it I like buying an extra Christmas or Thanksgiving meal and dropping it off to a church or a family I know is in need. I donate to causes with my tax returns. I feel bad that I don’t do more but I’m broke. I get the desire to volunteer time and I have before but there are somethings that I intellectually think I want to do but realistically know will never happen.

I have been in love with the idea of Habitat for Humanity for ages. I think it is such a worthy organization. Not only does it provide homes or families but it asks those families to spend time working on their home and the homes of others which gives them a feeling of ownership and pride that they earned it. That pride element is so important for people because they don’t feel like they were handed something. Self respect is so basic for happiness. I believe in the organization and every year I think I should do something to get involved in more ways than just donations.  I am past the point of pretending. I know I won’t.

House building involves being out in the cold, rain, heat, snow, and various other elements. I do not do cold. I hate cold. Cold sucks. I am simply too big of an asshole to be cold or wet to change another person’s life.  I am a bit ashamed of this but its just the truth. Also, when I really think about the potential for disaster with the world’s most clumsy woman around a build site I get frightened.  I broke my ankle walking from my kitchen to my living room one time, I simply do not think it is wise to put me around saws. I also have panic attacks while climbing on ladders. All in all, I would be pretty useless.

I have also always had fantasies of joining some world relief program like Green Peace. I imagine myself traveling the world feeding the starving and teaching kids to read. The fanciful part of me sees the glamor and adventure in these fantasies and swoons.   The realistic part of me knows I am not that person. I have tremendous respect for people who can do that but I like basic things like showers, hair conditioner, flushing toilets, and the internet way too much. I am a spoiled American fat cat and I know it. Before I met my boyfriend, I found a program that would allow me to teach in American Samoa in a year. If I would have been able to pull together things like money and a passport I might have went. American Samoa has wi-fi and very attractive men. That is as close to a third world adventure as I ever want to get.

Who knows, maybe with this new year I will find a way to give back that suits my style more. I should really do some research. I will put that on the list behind exercising, reading Moby Dick, and organizing my house.

My mascot and and example of the crap that adds to my brain clutter

Over my nearly three decades on the planet earth I have come to accept things about myself. I am awkwardly loud, I will always be very noticeable, I should never wear heels, and I am just not an organized person.

I have a deep burning desire to be an organized person. I enjoy organizing things and when I am stressed out I rearrange things. When I am on the verge of a total meltdown I make list and the more lists I make, the more gonzo I am about to go. I really love the idea of being an organized person, in theory at least.  I simply don’t have the attention to detail. Small things elude me, thus my constant comma mistakes, and my organizational systems slip all to hell.

Now, because I am me, there are things that I am super neurotic about. I have a system for my drinking glasses and coffee cups.  There is a certain way they fit into the cabinet best and they need to go in there that way. If someone else puts them away and they don’t follow the pattern, I will go behind them and rearrange the cabinet.   The other cabinets can be a total crazy mess but that one shelf needs to be a certain way.

Another thing I am really crazy about is my computer desk top. I have certain icons certain places. The icons I use the most are in the middle of my screen. Pictures that I have found but haven’t submitted are in the lower left corner. Pictures that I have submitted but  haven’t been either scheduled or trashed are at the top of my screen. Its the way I do things. If I were an organized person I would have folders on my desk top labels something like “Potiental Posts” and “Pending Posts” but I am not actually organized, just insane.

I would say that in this new year I would start trying to be more organized. I could say I will hang up all of my clothes as soon as they come out of the dryer or clean out my car once a week. I should say once a month I would go through all of my cabinets and rearrange everything and that I will go through my house and get rid of everything I never use. I have looked at all of my stuff and planned how I would organize everything or thought about the best way to make sure there isn’t the pile up I get. I know what I should do, just like I know I should stop drinking soda and I should walk 15 miles a day, but I know I won’t.  I’m just not that person. I think I just function better in a certain level of chaos, or I tell myself that.

What is really funny is that both my best friend and my boyfriend are extremely organized functional human beings. Everything really does have a place in their lives. I am in constant awe of how methodical they are about things. I am always in constant awe that somehow they manage to keep me in their lives. I think it is deeply repressed masochistic tendencies on their part. Another theory: God has a really twisted sense of humor and things that every organized, methodical person needs a tornado like me. My purp0se in life is to thwart any one’s attempts at order. Does it count that I don’t mean to be a pain in the ass?

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, but I am a terrible person. I say this for several reasons like I don’t care much for cats (I think they plot how to kill you in the event that you stop being of use to them), I laugh at wildly inappropriate things, I don’t believe all kids are sweet and innocent and can just be assholes (normally the fault of the adults in their lives), I swear, and I am terrible at keeping in touch with people.  The last thing is the only one I feel really bad about and would like to fix. I won’t though and I know it.

I live in a world were it is so simple just to write an e-mail, text message, or make a phone call to all of the people I care about but I just don’t do it.  I will miss people or remember great times with someone and just not do things to reestablish connection with them. I am a terrible person. I only ever really call two people, my bff or my boyfriend, and I don’t e-mail anyone. The other day I got to thinking about a women that I became close to at work and I realized that I talked to her almost every day for a year and a half and I missed her horribly. I sent her a few text messages.  What the hell kind of person sends text messages when they miss someone?

To be honest, I don’t know how I would know what was going on with anyone without Facebook. I hate that I say that and it be so true. It is so impersonal and really isn’t a substitute for genuine contact but at least this way I know when major things happen to people I care about (well, aren’t so annoyed by that I wipe all record of their existence from my brain) like marriages and births.

I think most people feel like I do but they generally have good reasons for it. They have jobs, families, and/or lives. Everyone gets busy. I don’t really have this excuse. I do spend a lot of time working on my writing but I don’t have kids or a life really. I am just easily distracted.  I will think to myself that I need to call or write to someone then something shiny will flash and I forget all about it. Or I think about stuff at awkward times. For example, I always think about people at midnight when it isn’t safe to call (at least I can drop them a facebook message) or I always get the urge to call Tina while I am at the super wal-mart, which I refuse to do. (People on their cellphones are either always in someone’s way or sharing information that they shouldn’t be discussing in public.) I text her about whatever it is made me think of her and promise myself I will call her when I get home. When I am home, after everything is settled out, I almost always get distracted by something shiny.

So it boils down to this: just because you don’t hear from me doesn’t mean I don’t care, it just means that I am lazy and scatterbrained. You guys should all know this.