The end of the year is often a time of reflection on the preceding twelve months, but days like today make me reflect on time throughout human history, on the entirety of my life, and on the coming century.

Since 10/10/10 I’ve bought a house with my then fiancée, married her, and are already knee-deep into our future together. We’ll look forward to 12/12/12 next year, but then may have to wait for a long long time for another repeating sequence. So it goes.

One hundred years ago the New York Times looked at this day and considered its historical import (spoiler: there isn’t much):

https://plus.google.com/u/0/102854051892257849160/posts/QmB2LTSCfHV

See you again on the tenth of October next year.

The rules are simple. Write seven things about yourself and then tag seven people, link to their blogs and ask them to do the same.

1. I have a hard time feeling loved. I mean, I know people love me, and I believe in their love, I just don’t feel it. I think this may be one of the main reasons I don’t believe in God.  Loving other people I have no problem with.
2. I value loyalty in friendships and relationships more than any other trait or attribute.
3. I hate the process of writing poetry, although I love having the poems when I’ve finished writing them. I’m my own favourite poet.  I used to enjoy writing when the result didn’t matter to me as much. Since I’ve been pushing myself to improve, turning towards danger and risk in my own writing, the process has been draining, wearing me out.  I started writing again in earnest at around the same time I started exercising and eating better.
4. This isn’t really a secret anymore since I’ve started the Clean Livin’ blog, but I’ve lost 87 pounds since mid-June 2008 (so far) and the kicker is that I really haven’t been trying that hard. If I’d known it would be this easy, I’d have started sooner. I guess I shouldn’t oversell the “easy” of it, because it’s a lot of work, but it’s not difficult.  It’s so simple, in fact, that I can’t believe I’ve been this overweight for so long. By this time next year I won’t be a fat guy anymore (although I’ll still have some weight to lose, I suppose).
5. I try to be honourable whenever I can.  Honour isn’t something that we value as a society, or even think about often, but for me it goes beyond doing the right thing and further towards being a right thing. I like to think of myself as an instrument of good in the world. I’m still working on this one because it’s so much easier to take the path of lesser resistance much of the time. Honour can be unpleasant.
6. I’m pretentious in a lot of ways.  I use British spellings for words like colour, honourable, favourite.  It’s a matter of personal style. Hell, I have a u in my name where it doesn’t belong either.  I used to read books or watch films that I thought I should be reading, or that would make me sound cool to be knowledgeable about.  In most other ways, though, I’m pretty down to earth.  I have no “guilty pleasures” because I’m not ashamed of liking things that I genuinely like, such as music or films.  “Top Gun” and “Roadhouse” are two of my favourite movies, but they’re not guilty pleasures – they’re movies that I enjoy watching.
7. I don’t know what the purpose of my life is, if I even have one, but it’s something that I think about often.

For the past four months I’ve been on the path to getting healthier, losing weight, and exercising regularly.

To help me stay focused, and to document the process, I’ve started a separate blog dedicated to my heath and fitness routines, workouts, nutritional knowledge, and thoughts and goals on my way to getting into better shape.

I titled it Clean Livin’: How I Got Healthy, One Day At A Time. Give it a read and let me know what you think.  So far I’ve lost over 60 pounds and already feel a huge improvement (even if my weight loss isn’t as readily noticeable as you’d think after having lost 60 pounds).  I still have a long way to go, but I’m confident that I can do this.

Thanks to everyone for their support.

Has it been a year, a month, and a day already?

The 2008 Summer Olympics are opening in Beijing tonight, and it’s reported that there were a record number of marriage licenses requested for today, so that Chinese couples could be married at the Olympics. I wonder if China will have a small surge in population in nine to ten months?

I’ll be back to post a follow up next September.

Yes, we can have change we can believe in!

… and wrote this post. All of it was second nature and simply an extension of myself. Really, it’s that second-nature to me now that I don’t even think about the technology.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/may/30/mindread?gusrc=rss&feed=technologyfull