New Year's Resolution

1. Start early.

2. Do what you say you will do. Make it into a habit to follow through on everything you say you will do, even (or maybe especially) if it is just to yourself. Try to establish a system of consistency for yourself, and follow the consistencies others follow, like celebrating holidays on time and sleeping at night, because it'll make you more responsible. Really!  Tip to get this done: focus on the system rather than the goal (from http://jamesclear.com/goals-systems). Also a random quote: "We begin to work only when the fear of doing nothing at all exceeds the fear of not doing it very well." —Alain de Botton 

In other news, I've accumulated this very long list of interesting advice/lessons for myself that I almost never look at. It's just there, a repository for future reference. I just checked and it's 18,527 words. I occasionally scroll through it when I add something new to the bottom, but there's just too much to go through for it to be practical/useful. It's a mainly a compilation of quotes from random articles I've read where the advice or story is surprising and seems useful. One day I'll organize it and put in all the correct sources where they're missing (see resolution 2). Maybe I'll post bits of it as I organize, whenever that happens.

Well, that's all. Our neighbors are throwing off some major fireworks. Here is the cutest default smile emoji (do people not really say emoticon anymore?) I've seen in a while ☺.

💤☺💤,
Happy New Year!

Happy Belated New Year's! o_o

Wow, I looked through some of my old blog posts and there's this certain point where I start to write extremely long posts. I mean, I've noticed that lately I've had a lot of long posts, but I hadn't realized that my old posts were really that short. How did I stay so brief? Maybe they were shorter because the time between posts was shorter and because many of them were describing links and music and games.

Anyway, happy belated new year! I'm not really sure what New Year's resolutions I have. Hmm.. The same as every year, I guess!

1. Get good grades
2. Be happy
3. Make new friends
4. Learn to project
5. Do less thinking before speaking
6. Don't hesitate
7. Figure out what you enjoy doing the most
8. Get into a good college
9. Do well on the SAT
10. Stop procrastinating
11. Go up to at least 5 people and say hello

Ok. I guess I shouldn't have so many resolutions because it'll be hard to keep up with them, but most of these are obvious or constantly in my head, so really the only ones I need to remember are #5, 6, and 11.

About resolution #7, that's pretty much what I must do in the next 24 hours, because I must write an artist statement for school and pick a concept to focus on. For the rest of the semester. It's so difficult to figure out what I am most passionate about/what I most enjoy doing. Isn't that weird? I always wonder whether I will eventually get really bored of what I choose.

Ooh, and the poll! I was making a list of words that I like or that inspire me and among the words I listed are the ones that are in the most recent poll. I noticed as I composed my giant word list that a lot of the words were beige or sandy colored, with some grey lavender and light slate blue-like colored words every once in a while. This was caused either by the meaning of the words, or the sound of them, or just by the letters. So I am curious what colors everyone else sees in these words? Maybe none of them are the right color for you, but just pick the one closest to grey lavender, so that I can get some results :D Or you could comment on the colors... which would be even more informative! Anyway, I am interesting in seeing what the results will be.

Ok, bye!


- - -
Oh that's right, I am also attempting a take-a-photo-every-day thing this year! So at the end of the year I will have 366 photos recording my daily life. 


Finishing that will be my 12th resolution for the year! :D

Happy New Year!

I'm alive. High school is busy, as usual. Happy 2010!
I have no new year's resolutions, so I'll make some right now.

1. Get all A's.

2. Sleep earlier.

3. Stay in contact with everyone.

There we go. Ok, so I was thinking. When I was 8 years old, I thought I was going to be a normal person. Go to a good school, another good school, and then another good school. And then I would get a part time job at a cafe and serve coffee to people. I always thought that was an awesome job. It looks fun. The only problem is that I can't handle situations with people, but I figured that I would know how to by the time I got the job. And then I would do everything else as a hobby. My plan kind of stops after college, simply because I didn't really know what would happen after that.

So now I'm thinking, if my 8 year old self could see me right now, would she be happy or surprised or confused? I keep changing my answer, but at the moment, I think I would be kind of bored. Everything is pretty much the same. I'd be happy to know that I survived middle school. I think I'm stranger than before too. And then I would be annoyed because nothing amazingly interesting happened between then and now. Nothing like, I learned how to play the clarinet, or I actually learned Spanish and Chinese and could speak it fluently! I hope that in 10 years I'll know how to speak both easily. Or almost as easily as with English. Although I'm horrible at explaining things in English, so that might be a problem.

Also. I've been staying up until 2:00am almost every night doing homework and sometimes even working ahead a tiny bit. Or finishing some art that I had been procrastinating on before. And I tell myself that I'm preparing for the future, so I can get into a good college and then a good job and all that. But then when I do get a good job, I'll keep preparing for the future. So I'm afraid that I'll always be preparing for the future, and never being in the future.

And everyone is preparing for some kind of future. We save our money so that we can use it when we need it later. As a kid, I ordered cafeteria food. I always left all the best stuff for last, but just when I started to get to the good stuff, we had to go, and I had to throw away all my wonderful food. I kept doing that, just because I'm stubborn with those little things that can so easily be done another way.

Anyway, the point is, the future never comes, right? It's like how everyone thinks about the past even though its all over. And then everyone thinks about the future even though it never comes. And it feels like we never think about the present sometimes, because it's over in an instant before it goes into the past. But if you pile up all the times you think about now right now, do you think it would be greater than the piles of future-and-past-thinking? I rarely think during the moment. It's always a little afterwards that I remember it.

I frequently think, "Record this moment." because I feel like I need to stop and absorb everything sometimes. Because this time, you can tell yourself, I know my mom's presence is over there, and my friend's presence is over there, and I'm sitting here, in my room right now, and it's cold. And then maybe if I want to recall something later, I'll remember it better. It works though. I remember a bunch of random times when almost nothing is happening because everything is normal.

Of course, you have to close your eyes when you do this. Because it's too easy to just think, "Record this moment." all the time and then forget it all later. At least with closing your eyes, there's some kind of risk involved. People could look at you funny, for one. Same with wishing. When you wish on something, usually, you don't have forever to do that. So by closing your eyes, it's almost like a little bargain. If you open your eyes too soon, the rest of the wishing time is gone. If you open them too late, then the whole wish doesn't count because you were being too greedy. Or something.

I've forgotten the whole point of this post. Oh well. When you start going off on tangents(I learned that word from my English teacher, because we often go off on these during class.), a lot of times you forget what you wanted to say originally.

Oh, and one more thing. Thinking. I think thinking is when you talk to yourself in your head. When you think actual words. Usually I do that when in doubt. But sometimes when you're undecided, your head is completely quiet. And most of the time, I guess we just do everything silently because it's instinct or routine or something. So if I just gave you an excerpt of my thoughts, it would be like:

Agenda.
Uhh.
Math-no-two hours.

in a span of 2 hours. It's weird how when you sing along to stuff, you don't think the lyrics in your head while the song is playing. It just comes up out of nowhere, all the words in succession. Same with reading and emotions and stuff. And talking to people. So not much word-thinking, I guess. A lot of times I wish I could just print out a script of my thoughts so I can see them all clearly. It's like when you draw things from life, but it's harder because only one point is in focus, but when you draw other parts, you focus on that part. And then since we have 2 eyes, lot's of times a line or shape changes if you close one eye. So taking a photo and drawing that is way easier cause you can't change it by looking at it.

Alright. I'm done.

And I am listening to The Saltwater Room by Owl City. I like that song right now.

Poll Results #7

Here it is:

What is your top priority this year? Only pick 5 at most!

Be happy	5 (38%)
Be healthy	2 (15%)
Be successful	3 (23%)
Stay in contact with others	4 (30%)
Make more friends	3 (23%)
Make good grades	9 (69%)
Practice more/Work on hobby	7 (53%)
Improve a skill	4 (30%)
Don't get in trouble	2 (15%)
Get in trouble	2 (15%)
Find soul-mate	1 (7%)
Find someone/something(other than soul-mate)	1 (7%)
Stay organized/on schedule	6 (46%)
Make more money	4 (30%)
Make more time	2 (15%)
Get a job	4 (30%)
Fix something	0 (0%)
Find inner peace	0 (0%)
Start something and stay with it	0 (0%)
Volunteer/Help others	1 (7%)
Make the world greener	0 (0%)
Be more social	1 (7%)
Win	0 (0%)
Get something	1 (7%)
Learn to do something	3 (23%)
Other (Whatever you choose, please comment on resolutions post!)	1 (7%)

Of course, a lot of you didn't follow the 5-max thing. *glares*
Making good grades got the most votes with 69% (9 votes).
Then practicing more/working on hobby came next with 53% (7 votes).
Staying organized and on schedule was third with 46% (6 votes).

Be sure to vote on the next poll! (And sorry for being 8 days late!)

New Year's Resolutions

Hey, I just realized resolutions is Re-solutions too since I had a little typo on the title. So new solutions again! Haha. Anyway, I asked some of my friends whether they could come up with 100 resolutions. No one replied yet, so I wrote some down in a notebook. Here they are so far. Feel free to comment about them or say your own resolutions(100 maybe?).

2009 Re-Solutions

1. Be Happy
2. Get into the high school I want to get into
3. Make more art
4. Make more friends
5. Keep in contact with current friends
6. Find another interest(to broaden the possibilities?)
7. Stop procrastinating
8. Do not go blind
9. Hope for a good schedule and make it come true
10. Keep up with daily things/homework
11. All A's, please
12. Find a job.
13. Survive.
14. Take lots of photos.
15. Create many masterpieces
16. Keep my spine straight so I don't end up like a hunchback
17. Follow a certain friend's hygiene advice (if reasonable)
18. Be a little more social
19. Do not embarrass self
20. Speak up
21. Make more time
22. Stay healthy
23. Learn to roller/ice skate. Looks fun
24. Learn to resist cold.
25. Make it snow.
26. Work hard.
27. Sleep at 11 at the latest on school days.
28. Exercise more so I will not die in gym
29. Be fluent in Spanish and Chinese (I think the top 3 used languages when English is added?)
30. Volunteer.
31. Stay away from presentations(if possible)
32. Make a signature. Seriously.
33. Don't break any bones
34. Enjoy all my classes
35. Remember to wear a watch during school days
36. Learn self-defence skills
37. Stay away from the dark side.
38. Find a way to get a dog.
39. Do not lose cell phone.
40. Be near honest people often in case I lose it anyway.
41. Find soul-mate (haha)
42. Find a cure for everything
43. Learn to cook more than grilled cheese and eggs
44. Stay organized
45. Keep priorities in order.
46. Get a better camera
47. Work with more art things
48. Keep a good unread book at all times
49. Keep all viruses away from the computer
50. Do not stay up till 4 to post something
51. Do not get into accidental trouble

More than 50% :D Beat that. (before I get to 100 re-solutions) I'm going to keep editing until I get to 100.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! It's 2009. :D
New Year's Resolutions, anyone?
I can't wait to use my page-a-day calendar. :)