Merry Christmas, End of the Year, and Other Things

First, 2 things.

1) I’m debating switching to Tumblr.  Thoughts?

2) You don’t have to be a WP member to leave comments.  I like hearing your thoughts on things.  Shameless self promotion, and maybe begging for comments?  …. naaaaaaah.

Anyway.

2010 has been a pretty damn good year, if you ask me.  Yeah, there’s just under 7 days to go, but I think now is as good of a time as any to recap on things.  I’ve gone though quite a bit this year, experienced a lot, and discovered many things about myself in the process.

I had my 2nd semester back at UNI in the spring.  Things went well, though I definitely started to feel bored and abandoned by all of my friends.  Thankfully, I met plenty of people that made things wonderful.  I went gambling for the first time.  Asked a lesbian out on a date.  Spent a weekend in the Twin Cities with Zeke and Bryce, going to opening week of the Twins new stadium.  Planned a trip to the Missouri Valley Conference basketball championships (didn’t go) and the NCAA tournament (also didn’t go) to see UNI play.  Witnessed one of the biggest upsets in basketball in years, when we knocked off Kansas.  (Aliiiiiiii, Ali Ali Aliiiiiiii… what an awesome guy.)  Started working for Hy-Vee.  Got my iPod stolen.  Vlogged.  Laughed when Facebook went down.  Discovered myself when I attempted to do the 30 Days of Blogging project (and failed).  Forgave my ex, at last.  Absolutely went off at the stupidity of American voters.  Had my first true “zen” moment.  And many, many other undocumented events.

As I’ve stated before on my blog, my faith is usually an extremely private thing for me.  However, I’m feeling pretty good lately.  I got a bit of a kickstart to my faith life in November, and am pretty excited about the future.  Thanks to my friends, both old and new (Q, Bennett, Spencer, Jon, and Zach) that have helped guide me through this phase.

And what about resolutions?  We can’t forget those, right?

1) Eat healthy (or healthier).  I did really good on this last year.  Slipped a bit, but everyone does.  Lost 10 pounds over the course of the year, would still enjoy seeing another 20 gone.
1.5) Exercise.  They really go hand in hand.  I’m starting P90X as soon as school gets rolling again.

2) Blog more.  It’s therapeutic for me, I know some people enjoy reading it, and I love hearing your comments on various things. Win win, ya?

3) Have more “quiet time”.  Reading, listening to music, or just disconnecting and getting away in order to relax.  I feel like I’m too entrenched in technology, but it’s quite difficult to detach from things.  And yet, the best days are the days where I’m out and about, doing things that don’t root me to a chair.

4) Watch my spending.  I’m pretty terrible about money management (ask my parents, they know).  As such, I’m making a valiant effort to track where all my money goes, limit needless spending, and become a better manager of my funds.

Hopefully I can hold true to all 4 (5?) of those things.

Oh snap… Santa Mom and Dad l00tz!  Forgot, almost.

• Quarters.  Lots of quarters.
• Funds for guitar gear.
• Gift cards to Panera, Subway, Starbucks (YES!!!), Apple, and Hy-Vee.
• A book on HTML5.
• Hermann Hesse’s “Siddhartha”
• Subscription to Premier Guitar magazine
• A mini multi tool… it’s pink.
• 2 Moleskine pocket notebooks, one for writing and one for music.
• Long sleeve UNI shirt (actually from my aunt)
• An awesome shirt…

And Dad got Mom an iPad for Christmas this year (that’s way too many capitalized words for one sentence… yeesh).  She’s pretty stoked about it, and I am too.

Merry Christmas, everyone.  Enjoy the holiday season and be safe.  I’ll see you in 2011.