Beginning of the End

The time has finally come: I’m sitting and waiting for class to start; the first class of my last semester in graduate school. In a few short months I’ll have my Master’s Degree.

Only three classes to go:

Multimedia Production – Monday 6p-8:40p
Mashups: Web 2.0 & RIA – Wednesday 6p-8:40p
Server Scripting With PHP & MySQL¹ – Thursday 6p-8:40p

But would you like to know the sad part about my schedule this semester? The only class that’s required for my degree is Multimedia Production. I did need one more elective, which the mashups class fills, but I only needed to take two classes to graduate. However, if I wanted to keep my financial aid and not have to pay for everything out of pocket² I had to take three classes. That’s basically why I decided to take a snooze and cruise class this semester…because I didn’t really need it, I didn’t want to take something that could bring down my GPA, and I wanted the extra time to work on my portfolio since once this is all over I’m going to have to start looking for a big girl job.

…I still have no idea what I want to do. Guess I’ve got 5 months to figure that out.

Ready? Set? GO!

Of Course I’m Sick

Well, I made it an entire day into the new year before getting sick¹, which is a personal record for me. Typically I’m sick for New Years, not afterward. But I woke up Monday morning feeling like death warmed over. Couple that with the fact that I volunteered to go into work early because the person that the system scheduled to work was only seasonal and is already back at college. That meant I couldn’t really call off, because then they’d short-staffed by two instead of just one, so I hauled myself out of bed and went in…only to have it start snowing the second I stepped in the door. If there’s one thing I hate more than cold, it’s snow/ice.

The worst part about being sick in the winter for me though has to be my nose. No matter what I do, my nasal passages always manage to dry out, get sore, and start bleeding. So now that my nose is running nearly non-stop, all the blowing and sniffling is just agitating the sore spots even more. I blow my nose and its about 60/40 snot/blood. Not fun at all, especially when I’m chained to a cash register with a line of 15 people or stuck in the middle of self check outs with 10 people in each line like I was today. I constantly feel like my nose is bleeding, and it’s not fun at all.

I also managed to do something wicked to my neck New Year’s Eve. I must have slept wrong or something because when I woke up on Sunday I couldn’t turn my head to the right without significant pain shooting down my back and across my left shoulder. I could turn my head left, look up and look down just fine, but the second I rotated more than a few inches right it was like someone had stabbed me in the back of my left side. It a little better now². I can turn my head both ways, but there’s still a tinge of pain when I go to the right.

I need to not be sick right now. I wanted to spend the first week of 2012 cleaning my apartment, organizing things, throwing old things away and generally de-cluttering my life. However, I’ve gotten a pretty poor start to it between being in pain and now being sick. I came home from work tonight and sat down to watch the news and ended up falling asleep. I woke up long enough to go to the grocery store³ and by the time I got home I was wiped out. So I plopped down in the love sac and watched TV / slept for most of the night. Now I’m wide awake but I’m going to force myself to go back to sleep right after I finish this entry. I really need the sleep!

I’m planning on coming home from work tomorrow and sleeping as much as humanly possible because I have Wednesday and Thursday off. I want to get as much done those two days as I can and still be able to do my radio show Wednesday. I have my first class of the semester at 6pm on Thursday, so that’s my deadline for getting stuff done for those two days. Let’s hope that I’m feeling better tomorrow morning when I wake up…maybe then I’ll be able to do a little cleaning before I fall asleep.

Becoming a Goal-Setter Again

Back when I took Finding Whitters down I decided to abandon my 101 in 1001 list in the process. Most of the things on my list were developed with Michael in mind. Either I wanted to do them for him or wanted to do them with him. And then considering how that all ended, I just didn’t even want to look at the list anymore.

That all changed a few weeks ago when I started seriously thinking about starting the challenge again. So I set out to start a list again. And somehow I managed to come up with 101 things again. Some are extended versions of goals I completed on the old list since apparently completing them wasn’t enough to get me into better habit. Others are completely new, replacing goals that I completed from the original list in the down time¹.

This list is decidedly more me-centric and focuses a lot on improving my health, life, and outlook. If I learned anything throughout this past year of hell, it’s that I need to start focusing on me and what makes me happy. I need to learn to let the little things go and not dwell on the past anymore.

So I present you once again with a 101 in 1001 list! Started today, January 1, 2012 and ending Sunday, September 28, 2014. Lets hope I can complete all my new goals!

Goodbye 2011, Hello 2012

In typical ‘Whitters is a horrible blogger’ fashion, my first post back is a survey! Please excuse me if some of the following answers seem sad/morbid/etc. because 2011 was not a good year for me. I hit my absolute rock-bottom this past year and every day is still a struggle to claw my way back out.

1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before?
Rode a skycoaster, got a non-ear piercing, got a tattoo, went to California (more specifically Blizzcon).

2. Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I didn’t make New Years’ resolutions last year. I tend to not make them because I’m very pessimistic and always figure I’ll just fail them anyways. But this year I think I’m going to make a few…probably will post about that later.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Not that I know of.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Nope, nobody this year.

5. What countries did you visit?
Unfortunately, none. I really need to travel more.

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?
A sense of forward motion in my life. I hate feeling like I’m stuck or slipping backwards and that’s how I felt pretty much all of last year.

7. What date from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
February 12. It’s the date I lost my best friend, my confidant, and the boy I thought I was going to marry. It’s the date I realized that everything I’d sacrificed over the previous 8 years meant absolutely nothing to the person I’d sacrificed them for; I’d put myself through hell all for nothing.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
It’s hard for me to think of things I’ve done the past year as achievements, because it seems like every step forward I took, I took ten more backward. I did face my almost crippling fear of heights though, when riding the skycoaster at Kennywood…I guess that’s an achievement, because I’d totally do it again.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Isolating myself and letting all the shit happening push me to the point where I could barely even function.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Yep. Landed myself a couple pretty bad cases of pneumonia early in the year and then keeping with my birthday curse, I woke up with pink-eye on November 29.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
My iPhone

12. Where did most of your money go?
Rent and Utilities…In fact that’s where about 90% of my money went.

13. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
The Lady Gaga concert that I took Kyle to for his birthday.

14. What song will always remind you of 2011?
“Love’s What You Left Me With” by Finger Eleven

15. Compared to this time last year, are you: Happier or sadder? Older or wiser? Thinner or fatter? Richer or poorer?
Sadder, wiser, thinner (60+ lbs thinner!), poorer

16. What do you wish you’d done more of?
I wish that I would have socialized more and tried to make more friends. As it is, I have very few friends here in Pittsburgh and Kyle is the only one that I hang out with outside of work or school. I also wish I had kept up with blogging, because it is therapeutic for me. Even if I hadn’t published the posts, I think just writing things down would have done wonders for me because I wouldn’t have kept it all bottled up inside.

17. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Definitely wish I had spent a lot less time crying and moping around, even if it is supposedly part of ‘the process.’ I also wish I’d spent less time trying to figure out what I did wrong because I spent months over-analyzing it before coming to the (obvious to everyone else) conclusion that I didn’t do anything wrong. What happened was not my fault in any way, shape or form.

18. How did you spend Christmas?
With my family at my aunt and uncles house.

19. What was your favorite TV program?
Rookie Blue

22. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
I’ve done this survey (or one that had this question in it) quite a few times and I’ve always prided myself on the fact that I could say no, because all my life I’ve never really hated anyone. That all changed in 2011, and as much as I loved him (and still do), I hate him just as much or more.

23. What was the best book you read?
“The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins

24. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Hands-down, Adele.

25. What did you want and get?
An iPhone, a MacBook Pro and a new TV.

26. What did you want and not get?
Honesty from the person I loved.

27. What was your favorite film of this year?
That would have to be a tie between Sucker Punch and Beastly.

28. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Went shopping with my mother and then to The Cheesecake Factory with mom, gram, and Kyle. I turned 25.

29. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Spending more time with people, not dwelling on the past and things I can’t change… Winning the lottery would have been nice too, but to win I guess you need to play and I didn’t buy a single ticket all year.

30. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?
Over-sized clothing. I spent most of the past year wearing clothes that were way too big for me because I was losing weight and really couldn’t afford to go out and get new clothes every few weeks to keep up with my size. Now I’m buying second-hand / clearance until I get down to my goal weight and then I’ll buy a bunch of clothes that fit.

31. What kept you sane?
Kyle. I know he thinks he was just being a good friend and doing all the things he normally does (making me laugh, coming up with things to do, etc.) but I don’t think he has any idea how much that means to me. He saved my life – literally.

32. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Jonas Armstrong & Matt Smith

33. What issue stirred you the most?
NY legalizing gay marriage and the repeal of DADT.

34. Who did you miss?
I really missed my family and my friends from back home. There are a couple times where I was pretty damn close to packing it up and going back just to be near them.

35. Who was the best new person you met?
There’s a lot of amazing people that I met this year. Met a lot of new people at work, and got to know some of the ones that I didn’t really know a lot better.

36. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011:
If someone has let you down more than once, it’s time to stop putting your faith in that person.

Musings on Friendship

I am guilty of saying many times that I have no friends…and in some aspects it’s true, in others it’s a blatant lie; it all just depends on the angle you look at it from. If you look at it from a broad standpoint, of everyone that I consider a friend, I’ve got tons of them. But if you look at it from the standpoint of those people that I am extremely close with, there’s less than a dozen.

It all stems from how I make friends. The majority of people that I consider my friends, I’ve never met in real life. I am a very shy person, and because of that I tend to be extremely unsocial in “the real world.” I’m much more outgoing online, and therefore that is where I’ve met the majority of my friends. Some of those online friends have even become offline friends because I’ve met them in real life.

Obviously I’m closer with my “real life” friends than I am with my online ones, but I think that’s pretty much the way it is with everyone. Yes, I do have a few friends online that I am extremely close with, but it’s not the majority. Computers make things very impersonal at times, and I think that somewhat hinders friendships online. But that doesn’t mean that I think any less of my online friends…it just means that a lot of the time unfortunately they don’t get considered when I’m evaluating my life and the way things are going. I have a much harder time crying on one of their virtual shoulders than I do crying on the shoulder of, say, Kyle.

But there’s one thing about my friends that remains true across the spectrum…irregardless of how we met, how close we are, if the friendship is online or offline…and that is the fact that not a single one of the people I consider a friend is expendable to me. Not one of them owes me anything in return for my friendship; hell, some of them may not even consider me a friend. But each and every one of them is important to me on some basic level.  As a rule, I don’t get very attached to people¹ because I have a very warped sense of self-preservation. So no, I may not mourn the loss of an Internet friend quite as much as I would mourn the loss of a real life friend, but that doesn’t mean that the person meant nothing to me; everyone means something.

Last night I lost a friend; someone I’ve talked to for years.. He decided that he no longer wanted anything to do with me because I was not interested in dating him. For all these years I considered him a friend, and for all these years he considered me an expendable conquest. He couldn’t “win” me, so I was useless to him. As a result he is out of my life and will never be in it again. And I thought that I’d be at least a little bit sad because like I said: everyone that I consider a friend matters to me. But I’m not sad…not even a little bit. Because I have absolutely no desire to be associated with someone like that. Someone with the “people are expendable if they’re not giving me what I want” mentality. So in the end all I could say was good riddance.

Every single person that I interact with on a regular basis, whether I consider them a friend or just an acquaintance², means something to me. Yes, people are going to come and go from my life; some losses will be severe, others not so much. But in the end I cannot even imagine how sad of a life someone must be living in order to treat people as if they don’t matter at all.

P.S. Happy Halloween =)