Christmas Eve, 2010.

I think my coworkers count for this, particularly the accounts lady, Pam, that was sacked. Immediately before Xmas.

Hmm, if my work Xmas party counts, anyway.

Yes, I somehow managed this. Not to say I didn’t eat pavlova and lemon meringue pie after midnight… but…

Jamberoo. Need I say more? Unfortunately, that wraps it up. There is a lot more to do, and quite a few of these last remaining ones are looking like they won’t happen at all. I’ll need to reassess those.

In July, Allyson and I drove to Canberra and back. It was a small road trip, but we did do it. It was originally going to be a lot longer, but we decided to drive all the way south some other time. We just didn’t have enough time to do it, really.

I did this yonks ago but apparently never made it official.

Good old borax insecticide + winter.

It’ll be ready in a few more weeks!

I now know that even if I’m unemployed, I can keep my head above water.

It was truly sickening.

In fact, my sister works there now.

No hallucinations.

Phew! It’s the hard things remaining now.

• They’re in Albion Park Rail! This means I can drive there in 25 minutes. BIG DEAL, since my last job had me catching a train for 90-100 minutes, then hiking to Glebe from Central station.
• They sell tangible products! Not NLP which I find highly dubious.
• I get to be part of a team, instead of having everything IT resting on my shoulders so I feel like I’m constantly under massive amounts of pressure.
• I’m treated with respect. That’s a key thing that seemed to be lacking before.
• I’m making about the same as before, only I don’t have to spend $57 a week on a train ticket. It’s closer to $25 a week in petrol. Oh and I get more perks because I’m an employee instead of a contractor… and they’re already deducting tax, so I won’t have a nasty surprise at the end of this financial year!

OK, so what else do I have to report? Well, what don’t I?

God knows how many goals I’ve achieved. I’ll have to do a full rundown in another post as this one will get too long.

I’ve done tons of drawing with my Wacom Cintiq (have I blogged about that yet??). It’s made it SO EASY to make cool looking drawings. I love it to bits. Look in the sidebar on the right to see a few links to images I’ve created with it.

A couple of days ago I registered the domain www.atherandearth.com. This is where my comic will live. I am still working on it, but I’m confident I’ll be able to start getting things done with it once NaNoWriMo this year is over.

Speaking of NaNoWriMo, I will be participating again in one month’s time. It will be AWESOME. I already have a fully developed plot!

Site Flight Web Design is over. I just never could get the hang of running a business. Don’t worry though, I’m not sad about it. It’s just me, I’m not cut out to be self-employed. Not enough motivation for things like that. It’s a problem I’ve had since I was about 10. Started out as a distaste for homework. Now it’s a distaste for doing things for other people while I’m at home. It feels like my personal space is being crushed, I guess. I’m happy to work while at a workplace, but I just can’t take that work home with me. Hence why I couldn’t handle working from home.

So it’s been a funny old ride, this year. It started out with me as enormously cashed up, buying cameras and expensive graphics tablets, leaving my Woolworths job, moving house, working in Sydney, ending each day feeling more drained of my sanity than the day before… then, I was unemployed, enjoying all the sudden free time but feeling lazy and sluggish and kind of doing that thing that George Costanza in Seinfeld did during the “Summer of George” – spending all my time “decompressing” by sitting idly. It got to the point where my sister tried making me do things by giving me lists because she was so upset that I seemed to be doing nothing. But I found my way.

I applied for a fateful job in late August, I got an interview, and the following Wednesday I was offered the job. I was nervous on my first day, and a bit spooked by the whole ordeal in the first few hours, where I had a whole lot of tasks bounced off me, and I was left worried about what I’d got myself into. But now that I’ve settled in, I’ve learnt that these things are doable and it seems like I’m appreciated in that workplace.

Because of my unemployment coinciding with my car needing a bunch done to it, I’m still in a bit of debt, but my job will take care of that within this month, and that’ll be a big weight off my shoulders.

Thanks to working close by, I will be able to not only join the gym next to my workplace and work out every day, but also work on my comic AND do NaNoWriMo without any problems.

This is it! This is the point in my life where everything works for me!

• Run home from the gym
• Go in the Contours 6 week challenge

Because I am forced to close my membership with Contours, I can’t do them anymore, which is sad – but it does open up two places for different goals, which is rather exciting! So, I’ve been thinking about it and decided to change them to these:

• Get a DSLR Camera
• Settle into a smooth weekly routine

The second one is so whitebread, isn’t it? But, I rather miss the days as a kid where I didn’t have to think too hard about what I was going to do at any given time, because it was normally already decided. Of course it will never be THAT simple again, but I want to run my life as efficiently as I can, so I don’t have to think hard about the things I know I have to do. I know that when I do think hard…. I tend to procrastinate. As much as I HATE procrastination, it’s my default state…. to do nothing. To have fun over taking care of necessary evils. It’s only rewarding in the short term and I really need to break the habit! I think that a good routine should allow me to do that.

As for the camera- well, I do not currently own a camera. I use my sister’s point-and-shoot if I have to have one, but I want my own… and I thought, I really want to take GOOD photos for once. I can take decent ones with a P&S, but I really would like to get to know a manual focus. I much prefer the depth effect of a more professional photo than the flat image you get with a P&S camera. Hence, I’ve decided to buy a beginner’s DSLR. For those that don’t know, it’s the kind of camera professionals use (though the one I get will be on the cheaper end – I can’t spend thousands thanks!!), with removable lenses and all kinds of manual settings. I don’t know much about them yet, but I figure I will learn as I go. I am definitely interested in learning. Photography is something that will partner very well with my CG graphics. I can even write it off as a business expense.

Well, I had but four remaining shifts to get this – yesterday I managed it. I don’t know how, but it probably had something to do with:

1. I was sent on my break early enough that I wasn’t yet tired and pissed off
2. For my last two and half hours I was cleaning, refilling bags and stocking the drinks fridges… i.e. not using a checkout.

Phew, I was beginning to think I would have to rewrite that goal.

Yes, I’ve done it. So far, it is not showing on the scales.

What a long morning it’s been!

The staff at Kmart were quite baffled.

I’ll admit, I was running out of ideas when I thought of this. Nevertheless… my photographic evidence:

Dinner!

In other news, my hair looks good right now, because my sister received a GHD hair straightener in the mail that she ordered from the internet. We tried it out.

Well, I did it today. By gum, it was damn easy. Today was hot. Really, really hot. So hot I had to keep fanning myself at work, and it was air conditioned in there. I went through one and a half 1.5 litre bottles of water in the space of six hours.

Well, one down. Only 100 to go.

Also on Skippy’s blog was a reference to 101 things in 1001 days, a long-term goals project focusing on doing a set list of things in the ensuing 1001 days precisely. For me, the end date is going to be Friday, 5 October 2012 (calculated using this tool). That’s shortly before the Mayan apocalypse, right?

Anyway, I have finished my list and here it is! I’ll be ticking them off as I go. Currently uncompleted goals are bold.

1. Get a full-time job that I don’t hate
2. Read the Hitchhiker’s Guide series
3. Make one new local offline friend
4. Quit Woolworths (in conjunction with #1)
5. If I can’t buy a house yet, at least save up $10,000+
6. Get down to 85kg or lighter, and keep it that way
7. Get the matching tattoos my sister and I have been planning since we were in England
8. Actually edit a NaNoWriMo novel
9. Try to get novel published
10. Hold the “plank” exercise for 60 seconds or more
11. Go to the gym twice in one day
12. Go to the gym every day from Monday-Saturday (it’s closed Sundays) for at least one week
13. See a psychiatrist about my anxiety
14. Have my gonadectomy
15. Release the first issue of Ather & Earth
16. Visit New Zealand
17. Go on a road trip
18. Go to the beach and go in the water (you’d think this would be an easy one, considering I live right by a beach… but I just never go)
19. Get up early enough to watch the sun rise over the lake
20. Pay off my Barter Card balance and close my account
21. Learn to use a Javascript library
22. Own a smart phone, preferably a Google one
23. Visit the Blue Mountains
24. Find out if I’m allergic to any food
25. Have a shift at Woolworths where I do not want to scream in frustration
26. Go one day without coffee
27. Go two days without using a computer or video game of any kind
28. Go one month where I work on Ather & Earth every single day.
29. Go a month without buying anything made of chocolate or chocolate flavoured or containing chocolate
30. Settle into a smooth weekly routine
31. Drink 2 litres of water in one day
32. Earn over $40k in one year
33. Radically change my hair
34. Spend a night out without having a panic attack
35. Cook a gourmet meal on my own
36. Connect my computer to my TV to become a Media Centre
37. Buy better wheels for my rollerskates
38. Quit playing Bejeweled
39. Visit 24 hour K-Mart between 1am and 4am, just ’cause
40. Visit Jamberoo Action Park
41. Buy a DSLR camera
42. Move to a bigger house
43. Be complimented on my home by a visitor
44. Drink a large Boost Juice
45. Catch and eat a fish
46. Get a perfect score on Rhythm Kung Fu (Advanced) in Wii Fit Plus
47. Refrain from eating anything sugary on Christmas Day
48. Buy that Beatles collection on the USB flash drive in the green apple
49. Make delicious cocktails at home
50. Roast green coffee beans in a popcorn maker
51. Watch all Tom Baker Doctor Who episodes
52. Buy a block of chocolate and eat it over the space of a week rather than all at once
53. Win something. Anything.
54. Finish at least the first draft of at least two novels
55. Get my car’s headlights fixed
56. Build a new shoe rack
57. Learn how to use the washer-dryer properly
58. Go one month without seeing an insect or arachnid in the house
59. Go on a waterslide
60. Get a kitten
61. Meet three people in person that I met online
62. Clean up my Gmail and keep up with all the emails instead of just looking at them all, sighing, and closing the tab
63. Visit Uluru
64. Get revenge on someone
65. Bake fresh bread
66. Go to bed at 9:30pm
67. Spend a full day exclusively in bed except for using the bathroom
68. Make a really horribly designed website for fun
69. Live in the Greater Wollongong area
70. Eat a taco
71. Brew stout beer
72. Make tiramisu
73. Find a cake wreck and submit it to Cake Wrecks
74. Make steak and stout pot pies
75. Consider myself a responsible adult
76. See Melbourne when it’s sunny
77. Finish Final Fantasy V
78. Feel financially secure
79. Skate backwards for three laps at the skating rink
80. Make scouse
81. Make Irish soda bread
82. Make soda bread ice cream
83. Go to Bowral
84. Borrow a book from the local library
85. Make real buttermilk pancakes topped with sliced strawberries and pure maple syrup
86. See the New Years fireworks in Sydney Harbour
87. Have a picnic on the grass
88. Wander the Haywards Bay home display village
89. Take my parents out to dinner
90. Learn how to take care of my car properly
91. Make a sand sculpture
92. Visit Caringbah Shopping Village for the first time since 2007
93. Eat at Outback Steakhouse
94. Buy a deck of Uno cards
95. Visit the Southern Gateway Centre
96. Walk on the Sea Cliff Bridge
97. Stay awake for 35 hours straight, and see if I start hallucinating
98. Get some new bedroom décor
99. Make an animated short
100. Eat at the Nan Tien Temple
101. Go hang-gliding