Old man yells at cloud
In about a month, I have a pretty momentous anniversary coming up. It’s not the kind of thing one would usually celebrate, being that upon first glance it seems to be a pretty big negative.
On the other hand, I’m pretty happy with how things have turned out since the event in question transpired, and that’s kind of worth celebrating.
So maybe a party wouldn’t be entirely inappropriate, eh?
Anyone want to come? I’m thinking shawarma…
Dada
Dizz Knee Land (1992)
One of the main things that jumped out at me when I was looking at old content for the anniversary retrospective a couple of weeks back was how incredibly pissed off I seemed to have been over the past twenty years or so. It seems like I hated pretty much everything. That wasn’t really the case, of course, but the whole site did seem really negative…not that I necessarily thought (or think) of that as a completely bad thing.
I’m still pretty ill-tempered, cynical, and curmudegeonly. A lot of things irritate me, piss me off, and just generally compel me to ridicule the individual(s) or orgnization(s) who are responsible for them. It’s part of who I am and part of what many people seem to have liked about me over the years. I think, though, that I’ve gotten a lot better–especially over the past couple of years–at focusing on things I do like, both in my life and in the virtual representations thereof. If someone is an idiot, I will not hesitate to call him one, particularly if that idiocy is harmful or potentially harmful to someone else. But I don’t get off on hating things anymore, or at least not like I apparently used to.
I think this is due to the fact that I do kind of enjoy things and take more pleasure in life now. I’m happier in general than I have been in a long time. Either as a cause or an effect of that fact, I tend to focus more energy on things and people and issues that make me happy than on those that don’t–which explains why I curate my Twitter feed so carefully, among other things. I mean things like experiencing music and history and cities and buildings and food and life rather than bitching (quite so much) about what stupid people do.
It’s also due to the fact that hating everything gets really exhausting after a few years or decades.
My freshman year in college is now officially “history”.
So I’ve kind of started pondering a pretty monumental road trip for this fall, the like of which I haven’t attempted in many years. No real details yet, but most of my ideas center around Winnipeg, and one of my drafts got me as far west as Alberta.
I know I have some readers in the prarie provinces, so if any of you want to remind me how boring I will probably find some of the vast spaces between all these cities (seeing as how I don’t much care for nature and the great outdoors) now would be a good time to rein me in a bit.
An alternate agenda would replace the western provinces with time in the US Midwest–specifically my first trip to Minneapolis in almost two decades. But I’ll probably still go to Winnipeg either way. It fascinates me. And after this year–what with the tenure process, all the teaching, and all the consulting work on the side–I deserve a big trip.
Inspiration includes this, which led to much geekerage and to this.