Accomplishments for 2012
I don’t make New Year resolutions – why set myself up for failure? Instead I think it’s more positive to review what I’ve accomplished in the previous year, and it serves as encouragement to do more in the coming year without having to specify what in advance.
1) The most personally important thing I did in 2012 was to get my wisdom teeth removed – all four of them. They were impossible to clean and had been poisoning me and thwarting progress towards fixing my dental situation. This was a big step for me, because when I was a teenager a dentist told me my lower wisdom teeth were impacted and I would have to go for jaw surgery to get them removed. He described it as having my jaw broken on both sides and then having my mouth wired shut for a couple of months while it healed. For some reason that put me off dentists for a while. More than ten years, in fact. Finally I couldn’t ignore the problem any longer so I went for more opinions. It turned out they were no longer impacted as badly and could be pulled without surgery. I had it done under IV sedation (because I’m a severe gagger) in March. It was miraculous – my only experience of the operation was a strange dream, and there was no swelling or any other complication afterwards. I’m so glad that part is over with.
2) I took my first overseas trip this year, visiting Hawaii for a week, getting a grand tour of the Big Island from my friend Phloem, and watching the rare transit of Venus from up on Mauna Kea. On the way back I visited San Francisco, also for the first time. My trip included several other firsts: Swimming in the ocean, snorkelling, visiting a volcano, banyan trees, malasadas and burritos.
3) I took an online design course to gain some breadth, and designed a built a piece of furniture for myself. While it may not seem remarkable in itself, it was an accomplishment for me because I’ve never done anything significant with wood and woodworking tools before, and it turned out better than I had hoped. I’m proud of both the design and the construction of this artifact.
4) Finally, I continued to make incremental progress in my ongoing life cleanup process. I digitized some more of my film (now up to 60/250 rolls done), eliminated a dozen boxes of old computer hardware and other junk from storage, grabbed a bunch of my vanity domain names (except my dot-name, which is blocked by an illegal registration) and started putting together a new personal website.
I’m happy to have accomplished stuff this year, and look forward to doing more in future.
