New Year's Resolutions and to-do list

When I was younger my New Year's Resolutions were always along the lines of "Be a better person", and other things so vague they were doomed to either obvious failure or obvious success, depending on the stringency of your definition. I've found I have more luck with specifics, and a lot of what I want to do this year has to do with developing or picking up skills. "Do X more" falls into the vagueness trap, but "Do this specific thing once" goes against the spirit of resolutions in my mind - they should be about continuous self-improvement. To compromise with myself, I've made a project list!

Take a First Aid course

This one might be a cheat to include, as I signed up for it at the start of December. It starts at the end of the month, and I still have to pay, so I hope they're not the sort to give spots away. It's something I've wanted to do for a long time, so I'm pretty excited!

Sew a bag

I have a few sewing projects under my belt, but I'd like to become more proficient at it.  There are some crafts I'd be happy to try once, and then leave be, and sewing isn't one of them, but the time required to set up and get a run at things, and the fact that it's stationary, are disadvantages it has against knitting. I have both the fabric and material to make an easy bag, though, and I have a few patterns I bought in a flurry of enthusiasm after my first sewing project, so I want to make a start on them.

Crochet Cthulhu

I learned to crochet hyperbolic shapes for my old job, and I use up spare yarn crocheting squares for the Henry Bear Blanketeers, but I can't do anything other than double and trebles. I learn better with a specific project, so I'm going to make Cthulhu from a pattern in Creepy Cute Crochet. I had been going to make this fella here for my brother for Christmas, but, having only looked at the pattern on Ravelry, I didn't realise the pattern was in Finnish, and Google translate let me down. (This meant my brother was the only one not opening a handmade gift from me on Christmas day and I am a terrible person.) This way I get to use a so-far-unused pattern book and get better at crochet! The pattern level is 'intermediate', but psshhht.

Build a robot capable of following a straight line

I'm excited about this one because everything else is just improving on something I can already do to some degree, but I have no idea about programming or electronics or building robots! I understand that the starter project for robotics is to build a robot capable of following a straight line, but obviously the eventual aim of my beginner's project will be to make the robot capable of feeling joy and love. It will be everything that I'm not. I yammered so much about my plan to build a robot that my boyfriend got me a beginner's Arduino set for Christmas, and an Arduino-compatible body, which looks like Wall-E if one uses a little imagination. Me and this robot, BFFz.

Learn The Heart Asks Pleasure First on piano

Because it makes me a little bit sad that there's a piano in the house and I can't play anything on it. I think I started to learn this piece years ago, before I gave up piano lessons and playing instruments generally, but I don't think I made it to the end, and it is incredibly beautiful. (I also think it's interesting that the sense of the piece is very different to the sense of the poem of the same name, by which I vaguely assume it to be inspired.)

Take a climbing course

I want to try a new sport, and want to do something about my feeble little arms. Twofer!

Run a half-marathon

There's one in the Phoenix Park in September, I can be ready by then! It will be nice not to expect this to happen when I walk into a sportswear shop or section.

Write a short horror story

I want to write anything that isn't precisely laid out facts, and short stories were my strength for the Leaving Cert. (I couldn't write discursive or persuasive essays without throwing in a qualifying, "But of course, I can see how I might be wrong and stupid and the exact opposite of what I've said may be the case", even though as Gaeilge it was "Níl aon dabht i m'intinn" and "Táimse go huile is go hiomlán i neamhaontais" all over the shop.)   Horror stories have a place in my heart, and I think it will be an enjoyable challenge because it's difficult to write a genuinely scary story.

I'll probably add to it over the course of the year - I want to take a language class, and join an Irish-speaking group to get mine back up to scratch, and start drawing again, and volunteer with kids once my Garda vetting for my new charity group comes through - but those will be a good start.

Fuzzy.

The other week, a friend and I were talking about polyamory (which I think is the most reasonable relationship system - if a friend told me I couldn't have other friends now that I had them I'd run for the hills, and, since it's occurred to me to think about it, I've never fully understood why romantic love is different.  But I'm not jealous in romance, and some people are, and it's nice to put things on a pedestal I guess, so different strokes.) Her take on it is that different partners fulfil different needs.  My working definition of romance is "like friendship, but fuzzier", so I keep drawing different conclusions.

I have some baseline level of friendship that I require in my life to feel functional.  I need to be reasonably confident that I can walk into a room and be able to talk to at least some people reasonable easily, and not have to sit by myself or feel I'm intruding or unwanted.  It's not a high bar, and once achieved I get to feel not too neurotic.  Once that threshold is crossed, the friendship becomes increasingly fuzzy, and then things get fantastic.

What is lovely in friendship is that, past my "yay people can stand me" threshold, people are creating niches, rather than filling them.  I don't strictly need someone with whom I can talk about feminism and funny things dogs do and food (hey, alliteration!), or Doctor Who and David Tennant and who would die first if this were a horror film?, or crafts and lecturers and this job, amirite?  I could go out and find people who would be happy to talk about at least one of those topics - I don't need the people who are there already.  I want them.  And I think that's wonderful, it makes people more than the sum of their parts in your interactions with them.

Being needed makes me feel useful - being optional and still wanted makes me feel fuzzy.

This does also make it hurt when people leave, or change - you still have a Sally-shaped space in your life, but Sally doesn't fit it any more, or you've both changed to a degree where you don't fit each other anymore.  And that hurts the most I think, when you haven't quite grown apart, when you still want the person's friendship but it just won't benefit either of you.  But that's okay too, it mattered enough in the first place to hurt.

"How lucky I am to have something that makes it so hard to say goodbye!"

In conclusion: friendship is nice.  Revelatory stuff.

Snip snip.

I like A Softer World a great deal.  It is my kind of pretentious, and puts some sentiments very well.

Last week I cut off most (fourteen inches) of my hair for The Rapunzel Foundation, which makes wigs for children who've lost their hair due to chemotherapy or for other health reasons.  I have had long hair since I was a tiny little thing, so it was a bit daunting.  I decided on it about a year ago when my hair was nearly long enough, and have been semi-binding myself into it by responding to "Wow, you're hair's getting so long!" with "Yeah, I'm growing it to donate to an organisation that makes wigs for cancer patients."  The more people to know about it, the worse it would look if I copped out.

I had misgivings about the fact of having misgivings.  My general attitude to charity and volunteering is "I can, so why wouldn't I?" but I did have to steel myself for this.  Part of it stems from having had long hair forever, and I'm not interesting enough for dramatic changes.  Part of it, though, is self-consciousness - long hair is feminine and pretty and the done thing, and not being the done thing can be a bit of a statement, and I am a sucker for the invisibility conferred by conformity.  I felt guilty wanting to place that over a child feeling ugly and not themselves.  So what pushed me in the end was not just a desire to help, but a desire to be - or at least act like -  the kind of person who values the happiness of others more than her own temporary self-consciousness.

I also got it cut the day my dog died, so wasn't really going to care how my hair looked.

Before:

After!:

That was taken before I had washed my hair, significantly less perfectly sculpted now.  I think my face is a little too chubby for it to look as well as it might, but I still like it.  It is still a novelty to reach back and ruffle, or go to wash my hair and find no hair there.  Bizarro!  Incidentally, that big coldsore turned out to be two coldsores which had melded together.  Awesome.

Also, I am not good at being stereotypically girlie in many regards.  Hair is one of them, just never got the hang of it.  Part of me wants to learn how one does hair while it's short and manageable, but that probably won't happen.

Fourteen inches of my hair.

I mentioned to the hair school what it was for, and they wouydn't let me pay at the end.  People are just lovely sometimes.

Bunch-o-thoughts

I have two spot tests after Christmas (which count for 50% of their respective modules, so I think it's a misnomer). Before Reading Week we had Invertebrate Form and Function, and after we had Vertebrates. Every week in the museum room there'd be a demo set up of specimens relevant to that week's lectures, porifera right up to mammalia. (Everyone in the class has griped a bit about the fact that we spent so long on jellyfish and sped through mammals in less than a week. I know invertebrates are terribly important, but I have a pretty strong bias towards things which have a proper vertebral column.) For the test, we'll be shown a sample of pictures of the specimens and have to identify them. Depending on how complicated and order a given phylum is, this can require giving Phylum - Subphylum - Class - Sub-class - Order - Sub-order - Genus - Species. And there were over a hundred specimens out in the final week of term. Sometimes I am confident, sometimes I am not. I've been flip-flopping on the value of it as well.I like the notion of being able to be all "oh yeah, that's X and it's related to Y and possesses these properties which enabled this other thing to evolve or stem from this ancestor!" but in a broader way than "You can see that the gill slits are much reduced and the eyes are lidless but have a thin membrane covering them and only the forelimbs are developed which is atypical of the Order." For such a simple and obvious concept, I do find evolution to be wonderfully beautiful and elegant, but it can be hard to transfer that into a motivation to learn that THIS dead thing in a jar has three toes in it's forelimb but THIS one has four. Or maybe I'm making excuses.

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I didn't make many Christmas presents this year. For the most part I couldn't think of ideas, and a present the person has no use for isn't any more considerate just because I made it myself. I am finding it hard to think of projects lately, which is a minor problem to the point of not counting, but it makes me uncomfortable. Usually my issue is lack of time rather than lack of ideas, so I worry I'm getting boring, and it's a shame to lose a hobby. But I want to make myself socks and a jumper and turn some old t-shirts into different things, so maybe I'm not doing too badly. Going to go wool-shopping sometime this week.

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Whenever people gripe about Christmas I feel childish for liking it to the extent that I do. Yes, it is materialistic, it is manipulative, it is hard on people. Yes, people shouldn't have to have twinkly lights up to remember to call loved ones. But if it does remind them, what harm? For my own part, I like having everyone together. I like that all my family come home, and I like that there's a set time where friends will make the extra effort to meet up. I don't think it's a reminder to show you care, just of the very fact that you do. I like cheesy cracker jokes. And I like thinking of a present I think someone will like, a token of appreciation of friendship or affection or something. I like giving presents, and it's odd to do so for most of the year. Also, the twinkly lights are awfully pretty.

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I can get myself very angry, and the world is very beautiful, and I need to find a balance on how much store I set by these things. I don't have much patience for people sitting around discussing grand political ideas and what kind of world would suit best, and then when they get into the finer points of such a world, oh do I wear out. Because I'm sure it would be lovely, but people are hungry and lonely and falling by the wayside in the real broken world in which you're having this conversation. I like discussing Concepts, but more ones like racism or sexism or blah which are real things towards which I can change my attitude -> my interactions -> the world a teeny-tiny bit. Sometimes I get so frustrated with abstract ideals I could cry because you could be doing something, organising something, changing something, but it's not my place to tell people what to discuss. But maybe it's rude to have a conversation one person can't join in on. And then when it comes to the doing, organising, changing, there's so little I can do. So much is wrong. And if I forget it I can become complacent, and if I only focus on the bad it's easy to become overwhelmed and stop trying for the same reason and just be an unproductive little ball of ANGRY. But the world is also achingly beautiful, and the point of getting angry and then doing stuff is to try and make it beautiful for everyone. But I also don't want to focus on the good alone and see the ugly through rose-tinted glasses. And good things don't negate the bad, or vice-versa - some people were mean to me in secondary school but people are nice in college! Unrelated! - but when there's more of the bad it's easier to feel a little helpless. "Today I helped an eight-year-old kid with their homework and we told each other stories and played chasing in the yard, five years later they ran away from home because it wasn't safe for them." "I bought a sandwich for a homeless man a month ago and we had a chat and he froze to death one night during the snow." I'm not sure where I'm going from this, because there's nothing I can conclude. Nothing to be done but keep going. Making on person day brighter for an hour or two a week is so much more than nothing, even if it feels so tiny. The world is so huge and wonderful and tragic.

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I don't know what I would like to do when I'm all grown up. I think I would be happy to work in a lab, there is a wonderful joy in finding things out and how amazing would it be to be the first person finding them out? At the same time, so much time that I could be helping people directly, just so I can feel a thrill of discovery? I don't mean to imply the latter option would be a sacrifice, I like working with people and I like feeling useful. But if my job is trying to fix things, it might burn me out to doing outside volunteering, in which case it makes more sense to go into research and keep up the auld volunteer work. Who knows.