2008: A year in perspective

We're approaching the end of the year now.

As another year draws to a close, I have to look back on the year that's passed, and see what I've accomplished between then and now. This year had a whole lot of different firsts.

My first night school course.
My first funeral.
My first job qualification.
The first time I managed to save up a substantial amount of money.

So what things of note have I done this year?
I've been mainly working this year, and saving money, since my friend Henry contacted me early in the year and told me he wanted to go travelling through Europe after he finished his medical internship at Glasgow. On a humorous sidenote, I kept pronouncing it 'Glas-cow' until someone corrected me and told me it was pronounced 'Glas-go.' To date, I have saved about $4000, and with the final paycheck that I get, just before I leave on my holiday, I will have saved $5000. That is the largest amount that I have ever managed to save in my 23 years of life on this Earth. I will strive to save even more next year.

As I've talked about previously, my aunt died in March, and it was my first time to a funeral. It was a very sobering experience. The solemness, the concentrated grief and sense of loss I felt at the funeral was overpowering. I can't say I felt much, because I wasn't really that close to her, so I won't say much more, aside from the fact that it was an eye-opening experience to go to my first funeral. I always thought that the first funeral that I would go to would be that of my grandparents, since I still believed that I lived in a world where death and killing was something that did not happen, was something that was only on the news. It was a jarring experience to know the bony hand of death can touch anyone.

Around about the same time, I took a night school course in bookkeeping and accounting, mainly because the parents wanted me to help out the family business in 'other' ways instead of just working there as a shop drone. It was an interesting experience, and I will admit that I did find the work enjoyable, although somewhat inducing of an anal-retentive approach to problems. You have to make sure everything is lined up, all the i's are dotted, all the t's crossed, everything in the right place, or else the whole thing doesn't work, and then you end up spending half an hour (or more) digging through your accounts to work out what went wrong - it could be something as simple as missing writing in a certain amount, and one stray number when working out accounts is truly a monkey wrench in the mathematical workings.
Truly, the business world is a fearsome beast.

Even more fearsome when you see the financial crash that will probably be one of the greatest defining events of 2008, alongside the historic election in the US of Barack Obama, the first black president of the USA. I think back to that stock market assignment that I did at uni the year before, and the way so many presentations mentioned the 'subprime crisis,' I wonder why I didn't see it coming before. Probably because I was distracted by all the favorable exchange rates meaning I could buy stuff online from overseas cheaper.
The crash really hindered my saving for the trip, since the exchange rate of the Australian dollar to the euro is approximately $1AU = 0.5 euro, meaning that my saving effort is effectively halved. I still hope that I can have a good time in Europe on 5000 euros for a month and a bit.

I attended a dispensary training course in the middle of the year, which was interesting. It was a weekend-long workshop, which meant I got time off from my usual working times (Saturday and Sunday), to attend a workshop paid for by company money. So now, I'm qualified to work in the dispensary in a pharmacy. It's certainly a lot more interesting than working as a lottery drone, I'll say. Knowing which medicines are which, which have generics and what those generic brands are called, being able to decode the world-renowned secret code that is doctor's writing, it's certainly a different world to running a lottery stand. For one thing, you don't have to worry about problem gamblers, and the druggies are dealt with by the pharmacist doling out their doses of methadone or subutex. I'll probably look for a more dedicated dispensary technician position in the following year - I don't know how much longer I want to work at the family business.
I've learnt very painfully over the past year that family and business rarely mix well. The main pharmacist at the family-owned pharmacy I've been working at has been my cousin. Three years my senior, she's gone through something of a rough year too, but honestly, most of us think she's a bitch. Rude, hypocritical, prone to mood swings and power-trips, a real dragon lady. Add to that she was pregnant for the majority of the year, and an annoyance is upgraded to a real headache. I've had so many problems dealing with her this year, that I've decided that I want to have as little contact with her as possible. I think since she had the baby in October, she's mellowed out a little more, but I still haven't forgiven her for some of the things that she had done throughout the year, in making work nearly unbearable, to the point that I had decided several times throughout the year that if she was to try to cause more trouble, then I would quit.
It would have been fine if I could just leave the whole thing behind at work, but unfortunately, when problem co-workers like that follow you home, you have to seriously consider whether it's time to change workplace.

I was again, in a relationship this year. The first one which I thought had some real, long-term potential. I met her at a friend's birthday bash. We really hit it off over several shared interests - she loved anime, reading, writing, and other similarly intellectual pursuits, like the appreciation of the Chaser, Heroes, and Top Gear. We saw each other a lot over the next three or four months, and I swear, it was almost like love.
Almost.
When I think about it, one of the highlights will always be how passionately and urgently our kisses were at the end of our dates, when I would drive her back to her place, and then we'd sit in my car pashing like there was no tomorrow until I pried her off me because we had places to go and things to do. We did a lot of fun things together - we went to the Adelaide Show, we ate out, we saw movies together (even though we had both seen The Dark Knight before we had met, we saw it again together because we both loved the movie and the act that Heath Ledger, in peace rest his soul, put in as the Joker), we spent time together.
The defining experience for me on that, before it started to slide downhill, will always be that sunny day we ate out for lunch, and then walked down to the River Torrens, and lay on the grass on the riverside, kissing each other and enjoying the sunlight.
Ah, puppy love.
Sadly, all good things come to an end, and I grew sick of her valuing her virginity like a religious artefact, and she grew sick of me, in her eyes, pushing for sex, as well as being sexual in general. I know there probably aren't any female readers of this blog (hell, I don't think anyone but my friends read this anyway), but I will say it straight out.
I am a man, and like any human being, I have needs. If my needs are somewhat more physical as opposed to emotional, then I'm sorry, that's the way things go. I will not apologise for being a man, and acknowledging that I have masculine needs, nor will I change who I am for the sake of someone else's convenience.
A bit of left-over vitriol from when I remembered our breaking up, her choosing to tell me over MSN that I'm dumped, and then proceeding to post a (presumably edited) transcript of our conversation up on her blog for people to see, and then rail at the 'dirty, chauvinstic guy.'

Moving on ...
Let's look at the goals I set for 2008:

1) Write a book
2) Lose weight and get to 10% body fat
3) Become a better man

1) Write a book
I've certainly gotten incredibly close for goal #1. I've written roughly 60,000 words, so far, and that's enough for a small novel. I'm about 80% of the way through. I have to thank NanoWriMo for that - National Novel Writing Month. In one month, I ended up writing roughly 55,000 words, which I felt was a big push.
In one year, I've gone from research, to writing. Admittedly, most of it was concentrated into November, but I still accomplished the goal. I'm now a lot closer to publishing now that I have 0.8 of a book, as opposed to the zero that I started with this year. The people whom I've shown the draft to absolutely love it to bits, so I'm on a good track (hopefully).

2) Weight loss
At the beginning of the year, I saw a lot of good progress as I finished up a 3-month training program, paired with a strict diet. After finishing that program, I then went on a week-long stint on the Master Cleanse, in which you eat nothing and drink nothing but a special concoction of squeezed lemon juice, special palm syrup, and cayenne pepper for up to two weeks. After the initial shock and adjusting to eating nothing and getting all of my nutrients from just liquids, I found it an interesting experience. Of course, such a radical change provoked consternation from friends and family. Amusing quotes include 'you look gaunt like a druggie now!' and 'you look just as thin as your terminally-cancerous aunt!'
Most of the year, I ended up cycling between attempting the anti-estrogenic diet for a week or two, and then just eating crap the next week, and then returning to the proper diet. I ended up getting used to the Warrior Diet, in which you eat little, if at all, during the day, and then binge during the night on almost whatever you want, barring refined carbs. In fact, if I eat too many heavy carbs during the day, I actually get quite sick for several hours.
Getting in a relationship is also not very conducive to dieting either, since it's kinda hard to force another person to follow the same diet as you if you are dieting in a certain way. During the four month relationship, I actually gained weight as a result of eating crap. Definitely have to find a girl who is into health like me next time.
I've come to the conclusion based on experience, that I tend to lose more weight when I focus more on building muscle than just losing fat.

3) Become a better man
This year, I've become more well-rounded, I feel. In Toastmasters, I've finished my ten speeches, and attained the rank of Competent Communicator. I took up Krav Maga for part of the year, which was a very interesting experience. I took up Iaido this year too, and likely to follow into the next year. Those push-up affirmations I did really helped - three months of push-ups and affirming that 'I am the man' really helped to push my confidence up further.
However, work recently has become more and more of a drain on my energy, so I am starting to look for work elsewhere.