The Year Thus Far

I've been kind of down on myself several different times over the course of the year, either because I'm not sure what I want, I think I'm tricking myself into be happy, or I feel like I haven't accomplished anything and have no accomplishments planned for the immediate future. On top of that, I feel like I don't really fit in a lot of situations, places, demographics, or groups of people where I either used to fit in or I currently feel like I should fit it.

It's all over-thinking.

I've done some cool things this year.

• I was positively appraised at work this year and received a nice raise.
• I was in a play that received great reviews. I played a key role. It took lots of effort, time, and energy, and I learned a lot about myself and theater.
  
• I went to Europe with three of my best friends. We planned and paid for it ourselves.
• I was sent to California for professional training and I visited San Francisco and the surrounding area for a week in June.
  
• I was invited to seven weddings and was able to attend six of them.
• I was the best man in one of those weddings, which saw me and friends of the groom boat all over the Chesapeake Bay in late July.
  
• I developed and hosted an olympics of faux-sports that I'd created over the past few years. The winners received medals and trophies that were specially made for the event and participants wore shirts that were designed for the event, as well. I made registration and score-keeping software for it. I built goals for Beotch ball out of lumber.
• I went to more Phillies games than I ever have before, and I went to most of them with my Dad, which was incredible. As a direct result of my increased fan support (obviously), the Phillies qualified for the playoffs for the first time in 14 years.
• I got my band back together for "one last rock show." We'll try again in a couple more years.

So, while in some respects that doesn't really change the attitude for 2007 from one of being in a "holding pattern," it does point out some really cool things that I've participated in or accomplished. My first full year out of school is nearly over and it hasn't been as lame a ride as I thought it was.

Who knew?

So it's still October (OCK-TOH-BURR!!), but looking forward to 2008 has me realizing that I want to build upon the things I did in 2007 and do it more aggressively and more purposefully. I want to actually feel the way I do about this year about 2008... without having to stop and reflect and save myself from feeling lame.

Make it a big year.

Reasons to like MySpace

MySpace is a part of my every day web browsing. I didn't plan that. I didn't intend for that to happen. I didn't want that to happen. It just did. More and more people that I knew set up profiles on it and I kept checking them. A couple people that I have the unhealthy desire to "stalk" have profiles there. It became something I check regularly.

Which sucks.

It sucks because MySpace itself sucks. It's slow. It's antiquated. It breaks often. There's spammers and phishers all over it. It's music player blares when you don't want it to. User profiles can be customized by jamming HTML and CSS inside the body of their profiles, which makes the pages various states of crappy, full of ads, and a bear for the browser to render. You can't see who's updated their profile recently, so you have to check yourself. "Bulletins" come in that are really just your "friends'" excuses to mass-mail you stupid quizzes and junk that you feel obligated to click on for no other reason but because "it's there." Your "friends" sometime post things on your page that make everything stop lining up -- and it's normally a somewhat crude or idiotic picture or advertisement you don't care about. Tables! So help me God, Tables! Tables were supposedly kicked out three or four years ago! Nested tables! What is this? The never-going-anywhere implementation of fatdog!?

But there are actually a few really cool things about MySpace.

• I can rank my friends. If I was a parent, I'd even rank my kids on this thing.
• I can show off what cool, alternative, and indie bands I'm friends with so everyone will know how much cooler than them I am.
• I can use it to play Justin Timberlake's "SexyBack" while I'm at work without actually committing to putting on my iTunes playlist. That way no one really can confirm that I like it as much as I do.
• I can confirm daily how much better I am than the people that made it.
• I can confirm daily how shitty I feel that I didn't get rich of such a poor and crappy implementation of a good idea and that "Tom" did instead.

So it's not all blinking text, animated GIFs, embedded videos, and sluggish page loading. Some of it's really great.