1) Finish more books. Like I said, I hardly ever finish any books. I think I have like seven books on my shelf that I’m currently “reading.” These include Lemony Snicket’s The Grim Grotto, The Time Traveler’s Wife, Persepolis, Clay Aiken’s book, Simon Cowell’s book, The Da Vinci Code, and Ethan Frome (the book I need to read for school by Tuesday and still have read only about two pages).
2) Stop renting movies and not watching them. Since we’ve gotten the big no late fees, unlimited rentals plan, I haven’t been renting nearly as much. Maybe that’s how the DVD people get you. Maybe they know that when you have no close deadline to get movies back, you tend to just keep the rentals lying around for a month, unwatched, and then return them right as your plan expires.
3) Try to do more to fill up my time. I don’t think I do enough. At least not enough of anything that’s important or memorable. I should do more so that when the year is gone again, I’ll think of many, many things that happened during it instead of just a few things. Time goes by way too quickely when you don’t do anything.
4) Redecorate, paint, and make pretty my bathroom. It’s not really my bathroom, but nobody else uses it, so I just call it that. Earlier in 2004, I bought a red paisley shower curtain. It seemed like it would be a good idea since I like red. I think it just looks too solid and big for the tiny bathroom it’s in. It also kind of clashes with the horrible white walls in the bathroom. I want to make the room more bright and colorful. Maybe yellow. Something springy.
5) Eat better. My 2004 diet was basically sugar, sugar, carbohydrates, and more sugar. I need to eat some better vegetarian foods! I need to stop it with this sugar addiction! Sugar is EVIL. EVIL, EVIL, EVIL.
6) Do more to embrace the seasons and make them last longer. I want flowers for spring, sunlight for summer, pumpkins for autumn, and pine for winter! I don’t want the year to be a blur of sameness all the time. I want more color!
7) Post more on this blog. Lately, this blog has just been full of photos and illustrations. Although I really like to take pictures and illustrate, I find that it makes my site seem too cluttered and empty. It also takes up a lot of web space.
8) Try to be more flexible and make the best of every situation. Don’t rush when I shouldn’t rush and rush when I should.
9) Just make life more exciting, vibrant, and more colorful.
Now, here is a list of things that I really should do but there is no chance that they will ever happen:
1) Procrastinate less. I procrastinate way too much. I had the entire break to read all 80 pages of Ethan Frome. The break ends in about a day and a half and I STILL haven’t read any more than the first few pages of the prologue.
2) Get a job so I can pay for all of the stuff that I really, really want. I really should get a job, but something about the whole thing terrifies me. I once had a job in like the sixth grade. It was every saturday morning for five hours and it consisted of putting fruit from large baskets into smaller baskets. I got fired. I am just not good at the whole working for other people thing.
3) Learn how to drive. I’ve been able to do this for about half a year now, but I still have no desire to learn how. I think I am also terrified of this. I am afraid of killing myself or somebody else. I also think I’d be way to self conscious while driving. I wouldn’t know how to act or what to do! Hmm…. I don’t see a sign that says I can’t turn on red, but I better not risk it. I’ll just wait here for the light to turn green…. Okay. The light is green. Wait. That’s only a little green arrow. What does that mean? Can I turn? Maybe I’ll just wait another five minutes before I do anything. Yeah, I’ll just do that….. Why are there all these cars behind me? Are they honking? AAAAGH! What do I do?
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Driving… ugh, just put it off, it’s better that way. I put off getting my permit for two years, cause basically I could have cared less. I didn’t want to take the time to go all the way out to the far side of the city (about a two hours drive away) and get one, it didn’t seem practical, it didn’t look fun and whenver I need to go somewhere I can just get Mr. Greg to drive me. Though after a lot of persuasion from my dad I got into Driver’s Ed, basically for the lowered insurance (and also because at the time I didn’t have a clue how to drive.) It was a semester of torture and did I mention my former P.E. teacher taught the class (torture isn’t quite the right word.) The class was split into two portions, the first quarter/portion was driving theory, basically learning all about driving without actually doing it. The second portion was driving. We were supposed to have some outside of class driving experience before the second portion.
I actually have a number of fond memories that I acquired during the driving portion:
On the first day of class after a number of students drove the car around doing little driving tasks, Mr. Beck told me to take the wheel of the rusty stick-shift Toyota L300 after asking if I had done some practice driving over break, not wanting to embarass myself in front of my classmates as well as get a lecture from my teacher, I told a little white lie and said “yes.” This was untrue because a. I had not done any practice driving over break and b. I had never once been behind a driver’s wheel much less driven a car. By some miracle of God I actually did okay, no deaths and only two or three stalls. It was however, probably one of the single most heart stopping moments of my life having to jump from never driving to shooting down the road in third gear. I was sure I was going to die, I didn’t think I was going to die, I was SURE I was going to die.
I was parking the vehicle one time in front of an elevated sidewalk and went too far actually lodging the bumper up on the sidewalk.
I stalled the vehicle at the entrance of the school, I somehow managed to do it covering both lanes of traffic. I had two lanes of cars waiting on me (a number of them parents, who I knew) it was pretty embarassing.
We got back to school late one time (Driver’s ed was first period, whoever thought of that was an idiot) and some of my classmates were crossing the road, I slowed down but didn’t stop because they would be out of the road by the time I reached them. My “friend” Carry (she played my fiancee Ruth’s sister in our Senior Production “Dear Ruth,” It’s only important because that’s how I know her) suddenly feigns stopping, I guess to freak me out, which it did. I slam on my breaks, well what I thought was my breaks it was actually my gas, I hurtled forward and if she hadn’t juped out of the way I would have ploughed her over, on a better note she never tried it again, lol.
On about my fourth test in driver’s ed, on an intersection between two lanes of traffic (rural are) on the side of a hill I had to park the car backwards then forwads four times no more then six inches from the curb with both wheels, my rear window was only 24 inches by 24, but from the front of a big L300 hundred van 24 by 24 looks like 5 by 5. It was a hard enough task as it was but about half way through a group of about 15 to 20 kid showed up and were playing in the road right behind the van, I wanted to stop but my teacher told me to keep backing up, I was about ready to give him my keys and tell him I refused (hey I don’t want to be responsible for anyone’s death) when they moved out of the way and I was able to make it through with a minimal amount of worry. But as my luck would have it the road I’m suppossed to take the car into has a herd of cattle coming up it, no joke, first kids now cattle. It was a nightmare, then he gave me a c on the test, I navigate through kids and cattle and get a c.
Less than a month ago, towards the end of Driver’s Ed, I was pretty confident in my driving, rarely made mistakes and when I did they were very minor, wasn’t hitting anything and I never stalled. Well I was coming up to school and the bell had just rung so I was hurrying, but not overly so when I reached the top of the hill I turned the car to it’s parking space. A number of freshmen who were heading to the class right in front of the parking space, stop to watch me park. I take my foot off the gas and begin applying pressure to the breaks and accidently only the breaks, I pressed down to hard and the car stalled… two feet in front of the parking space, it was bad the car shook emitted a gurgling sound and died. And in front of a whole class of freshmen, they just shook their heads with smug looks on their faces and walked into class. What a way to start a day.
Wow, didn’t mean to write so much but sometimes it’s hard to stop once I’ve started. What was my point again? Oh yeah, driving sucks, continue putting it off.