Looking Back at 2008

2008 has been an awesome year for me. I feel I've learned a lot and moved my life in the right direction. I'm coming out of 2008 as a happy person on the right track.

2008 was the year when I finally started working on my thesis. Okay, so I should have started in January and it wasn't until late August I finally got around to it. But I learned a lot from that experience. Now my thesis work is coming along great and I look forward to being done.

Economically, 2008 has not been the best year. I've worked as a TA but the whole owning my own apartment is a bit expensive. I could have taken another job but I chose to focus entirely on my thesis. This is something I hope to fix in 2009. It is stressing me a bit but hopefully I'll have a job around March or April and everything will work out great.

Personally, 2008 is the first year since 2001 where I've been single the majority of the year. I liked that. It was a good experience where I learned a lot about myself. Now I have an awesome boyfriend which is even better. Not because I have a boyfriend but because I have this particular boyfriend. And it feels great to know that I am with him because I choose to be* -- not because I feel I have to or out of habit or because I can't function on my own.

So all in all 2008 worked out pretty great. I have a plan and everything is going right so far. What more can one ask for?


*And also, he wants to be with me.

Being Emotional

My latest post prompted more than one guy to ask me if I was talking about him. First off, if you actually take time to write me and ask, odds are I'm not talking about you. Second, the post was more emotional* than the posts I usually write.

I like to think my posts through and write them in a calm and rational fashion. While I did think a lot about my last post, it was not all that calm and rational. I considered if I should post it at all. But I decided that it's my blog and, as much as I try, I can't be calm, rational, or even just reasonable all the time.

I'm not really fond of the emotional side of myself. If I could, I would be reasonable and rational all the time. Or at the very least reasonable and rational about being unreasonable and irrational. But that's just not the case.

When I wrote the last post, I was angry, and writing it only made me more angry. I was in no mood to make sure I was being fair and reasonable. But instead of hiding that side of me, I chose to post and expose it. Because that's also part of who I am**.


*Emotional meaning "controlled by emotions" rather than "about emotions"
**This is already way too emotional for my taste!

Making Me Bitter

I'm usually quite easy-going, happy, and relaxed. I seldom get really mad, pissed off, or even just annoyed. Actually so seldom that I think it's kinda of a character flaw. I just don't like conflicts.

However, one thing annoys the hell out of me! Guys I've been with that turn bitter. It has happened to me more than once. Which of course could indicate that I'm an awful person that just makes people go all bitter and sour. But I really don't think that's the case. Sure, I've done some stupid stuff and I'm not always nice. Sure, people have had legitimate reasons to be mad at me. But I've never been even near bad enough to warrant someone, drunk enough to barely be able to sit on his bar stool, spewing out, "I hope she dies!" in front of my friends. Of course there's always the possibility he wasn't talking about me.

I loose respect for bitter guys. One thing is not wanting to have any contact whenever whatever kind of relationship we had is over. While I often don't understand that point of view, it's certainly fair to feel like that and as long as everyone acts civil around each other, I don't see any problems. Another thing is losing the ability to act civil around me i.e., refusing to say hi, walking right past me as if I'm not there, ignoring a smile, et cetera.

It annoys me for several reasons. First, seriously? That shit is stuff a 12 year old would find childish! Second, if a person has meant a lot to me, it's not like I stop caring just because I don't want to be with them anymore. I still read their blogs or whatever and like to know how they're doing even though I don't even talk with them on a friendly level.

The third is a bit more fishy. I think it's bad to talk evil about your ex partners. And while this stuff has annoyed me a lot and I think it's legitimate of me to feel that way, I still don't like to talk too much about it to other. Mostly in a "Well, I don't want to talk bad about an ex but that shit is really annoying me! I mean, come on!" way. Which means that I'm now probably 3 times as bitter as I would have been had I just gotten it out earlier. So now I'm posting this on my blog instead which, really, is much worse than trash talking an ex even though I haven't listed any specific person(s).

Can't really blame others for that last one, though. But I still resent some for making it difficult for me to just act natural and civilised around them. So there. Now I got it out and can go back to being a bigger person and avoiding all the drama.

The (Un)importance of Looks

I have recently debated the importance of looks in a potential partner with a friend. He thinks you can divide people into 3 groups: The ugly ones that you'll never ever be with, the regular ones that you'll be with if you like them, and finally the hot ones that you'll be with even if they suck.

He and I think very different when it comes to this. Looks have never really been important to me. I'm not sure if they're even in the "nice to have" category for partners. It's just so ... irrelevant. When I try to describe the perfect guy, it's not until afterwards I think, "Hey, I totally get to pick and choose here. Perhaps I should have mentioned that he should be good-looking. Narh. It's not like I care anyway."

Personality is very important to how I perceive people's looks. I have a hard time finding people hot if I don't like them. When I look at pictures of hot guys, I also project some kind of personality onto them. I like it if they smile. I don't like it if they look mean, tough, or arrogant. When I watch movies I almost always end up finding the "hero" good-looking. I remember watching movies and thinking, "Yeah, he's not hot. I'm not gonna find him hot after watching the movie." And then when the movie is over, "He's kinda cute." Similarly I often end up finding the villain unattractive.

While I can certainly appreciate guys that look good, their looks don't really qualify for anything else than getting me to look at them. I wouldn't accept shit from people just because they looked good. Similarly I wouldn't disregard a guy as a potential partner just because he's bad-looking.

Of course it's important that you're sexually attracted to your partner. But for me if

1) You're a guy
2) You take regular showers
3) I have any form of of crush on you

we got that covered. Yeah, I'm a simple person. Besides, it's more about what he does than how he looks.

So while this should boil down to "looks don't matter", to be quite frank, I might have a bias against good-looking guys. Not that their looks disqualify them. It's more that guys don't just wake up being buff and all that. They need to spend time and money to look like that. First, I can't really relate to that. Second, as Vix points out, you might get self-conscious around a too buff guy. Well, maybe self-conscious isn't the right word for me. It's more that if you believe that looks are that important, then it just seems like a strange choice to date me.

So I guess it's, "Looks don't matter. But it matters if you think they do."

Worrying

One thing I've noticed that sets me apart from most other people I've met is that I don't tend to worry. Most of the time I think this is a good thing. Like the quote, "If you worry, you die. If you don't worry, you die. So why worry?"

In my world things always work out some way or another. Sure, some options may suck more than others but in the end I always manage. Trowing my purse away in Italy didn't leave me worrying how on earth I would get home with no passport, no money, and no phone. I wasn't there alone and I knew that the people around me would make sure I got home.

Perhaps I have a naive trust in not just the people around me, but also myself. I usually think that as long as I have my VISA card and my cell phone, I'll manage. Maybe I just got an ability to see the very big picture. I've never been in a situation where I don't know for sure that people have coped and do successfully cope with much, much worse. So why shouldn't I be able to do the same?

Not worrying is also closely related to not fearing stuff. I'm not saying I'm some fearless daredevil. I'm most definitely not. My point is just that I don't actively fear things without being right in front of them.

Sometimes people ask about your biggest fear. I never know what to answer. A friend of mine said he was afraid that something bad would happen to the people he loved. I felt like sort of an ass for not thinking about that one. But the truth is that I don't fear that. I would hate for it to happen but I don't go around thinking about it. I don't see the point -- it's not like it would make any difference.

Finally I would like to share one of my favorite poems. Perhaps I just took the advice in that one.

Growing up

One of my favorite quotes is, "You don't stop playing because you get old. You get old because you stop playing." Anybody knowing me just a little can testify that when it comes to fun, I'm such a big child. I often joke that I'll never grow up. While this is hopefully true for the fun part, there is also all the other stuff.

Last September I moved into my very own apartment. Very own in the sense that I own it. Having the bank loan me an amount that ridiculous was quite a weird feeling. They were lending me more than 20 times the largest amount I've ever had in an account. Seeing my name on the deed was even more weird. I kept having this feeling that at some point they would discover that I wasn't really an adult and tell me, "Well, that was fun. Now stop pretending to be an adult!" Naturally they haven't done that yet.

If everything goes well, I'll finish my thesis this year. This means I have to go and get a job out in the real world. That invokes sort of the same feeling, that I'm pretending to be an adult. Even though I turned 23 last week*, I don't really feel like an adult. At least not that kind of an adult. Though I can feel myself slowly adjusting to the thought. However, I still don't feel like an adult in the same way that my parents are adults. Or just the way my sister who's married and has a child is.

Even so I know I'm growing up. I'll see myself making responsible decisions and in general just acting more emotionally mature. I like it. It's nice to avoid drama. It feels good to remove myself from situations I don't want to be in. I like feeling in control of my own life.

But mostly the process reminds of when I first started at the university. After the first half or whole year, sure, I felt that I had learned a lot. But I didn't realize exactly how much until I talked to somebody from "the outside". I would take thing for granted that other people had never heard about and use technical terms as part of my everyday language. I didn't notice that in my everyday life because everybody else around did the same thing.

Growing up is kind of the same to me. I'll notice but since everybody around me is acting more adult and responsible as well, I wont see just how much until I meet people who aren't grown up even though their birth certificate says they should be. And yeah. Then I feel all proud of myself and stuff.


*My birthday was Thursday. The weather was nice and sunny Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, yesterday, and today. Thursday it was rainy and somewhat cold. Go figure!

Casually picking up guys

So the results from the poll got in. When I posted the poll, I was being rather cocky stating that surely I would be right when it was my blog. But it turned out that people didn't vote like I would have done. Let me go through the possibilities in the poll and comment on them.

0. It's a sin if you're not married! I think this one mostly got 3 votes because it's fun. I can't imagine that I have 3 friends thinking that premarital sex is a sin. Because, really? That's just absurd! As a friend of mine once said, "I don't believe in marriage without premarital sex." That might be a bit strong, after all you can get lucky. But I definitely get her point.

1. With 11 votes this was the winner. Even if you subtract 4 votes for my sister's excessive voting, it would still be a clear winner with 7 votes. I can sort of see the point here. Sort of. But I have to wonder. If only one person is okay within 24 hours, then how many are okay within 48 hours? 2 or still just 1? If the latter applies, then how long do you have to wait before you can pick somebody else up? Do you have to give the guy your number pretending you would really like him to call while he pretends he will call just to keep up some illusion of it being about more than sex? What if you try all evening picking up a guy but without luck? Is it just game over for the evening or are you allowed to pick up somebody else because you technically haven't been with anyone yet?

Yeah, that's a whole lot of wondering. If you plan on turning everything into a relationship, I can see how it might seem like a bad thing to pick up more than 1 person within 24 hours. But we're not talking relationships here. Besides, how will you ever get to participate in a threesome if you can't pick up more than one guy within 24 hours? Wait. I know several answers to that one.

2. This one got 2 votes. I'm not sure how I like this option. If you don't feel that 1 should be the limit, then why should it be 2? Sure, in practice you might never pick up 3 persons within 24 hours. But why shouldn't it be okay when 2 are? To me this option mostly seems like an option for people who have realized that perhaps it doesn't have to be about relationships but still quite haven't escaped the perceived societal pressure.

3 and 4. Neither of these received any votes. This makes perfect sense to me. Obviously societal pressure isn't your biggest concern, when you think it's okay to pick up more than 2 persons within 24 hours. So you might as well go all the way and state that there isn't any specific limit.

Unlimited, but don't let any of them know! To me this one is tacky at best. I can certainly see Tveon's point about how it's not really guaranteed to come up in the conversation. It's not like the first thing you do when you meet someone is to hand over a full report of your whereabouts for the last 24 hours. However, what I meant with this option was that you make a huge effort to avoid someone noticing that you've already picked up another person earlier. That I dislike. Sure, not mentioning it might be perfectly reasonably but actively concealing it? Yeah, not so much.

Unlimited, but don't make an effort to hide anything. By now it should be fairly obvious that this option got my vote. Why I think you shouldn't make an effort to hide anything, should be apparent from the last paragraph. So what's with the unlimited part? This might also be self-evident from my comments above. Nevertheless, I'll explain.

I don't really like rules of the type "If you get a girl's number, you cannot call before minimum 2.8 days later", "If you break up with someone, you cannot date anyone else before at least a month later", or "If you make out with someone, you have to wait minimum 24 hours before making out with someone else." What's with the fixation with hard numbers? I just find it silly.* If you need rules like that, you probably have another problem.**

I firmly believe that a lot of these rules were invented to make people appear different than they really are. And I don't think they work. If you're desperate, waiting 2.8 days before you call someone isn't going to chance that. If you're not desperate, calling before 2.8 days have passed isn't going to change that either.

So in the end I just don't believe in following rules like that to avoid people's judgment. If everyone involved is consenting adults, I say "Go for it!" Or, as Belle de Jour put it, "[D]on't ever turn down pleasure because you were afraid of what other people might say."


*Except for the Standard Creepiness Rule. I like that one. But of course everything happening between consenting adults is okay. And it doesn't work that well for people younger than 14.
**Which would explain my very firm and solid no relationships before June 22 2008 rule. I simply cannot be trusted to make sensible relationship decisions when I'm crushing on a guy.

Describing Mr. Right

I procrastinate a lot. It's really a bad habit for me. Anyway. Procrastination recently led me to the question, "What's your ideal boyfriend?" Which got me thinking. I'm not really sure about my answer to that question. I think it's a lot easier to answer what I don't want in a boyfriend than what I actually want.

So far I've been enjoying my single life and even considered if I want to end up with a boyfriend for the rest of my life. Team zebrahest is a pretty awesome team as it is. It's not like it needs another member. Perhaps I'll be exactly as content or even more just being me. Most likely it's fine either way.

But back to Mr. Right. The first thing that comes to mind is that he must see other people as individuals. I absolutely loathe stereotypes and I get very annoyed when people try to explain things with them. Sure, the brain likes to put people in boxes but don't assume that these boxes are fitting. I believe in evaluating people based on their actions and their words and not on some arbitrary stereotype.

Closely related to the previous point is that he mustn't be impressed by the fact that I'm a woman and do what I do/am what I am. I sometimes get the "You're a girl studying computer science. Wow! That's pretty impressive!" reaction from people. Really? Why would that be impressive? Because girls are naturally stupid and bad at technology so it's a miracle they could be be studying something like computer science? Yeah, that's not gonna succeed in picking me up. Often people don't realize that when they say that it's impressive that I am able to <whatever> and I'm a girl, they're really saying that girls normally aren't able to do that*. If you're going to ditch my gender, we're not going to have a future.

Wow. Got a little rant-y there. Back to the perfect guy. I'm a bit torn about interests. I don't want him to share all my interests. That would probably suffocate me. If I'm going to have a life with somebody else, I'll still want a life of my own as well. On the other hand it would just be weird to have absolutely nothing in common. As I said to Thomas earlier, "But come on! It would be weird having no shared interest. What would you do when you were together then? [pause] Oh wait. That was a silly question."

But anyway. I would probably like at least some common ground. Oddly enough I think I prefer the common ground not to be bridge, AGF, foosball, the same set of friends, or computer science. Those are all social things that I really enjoy and I prefer to just be me when doing them. Not part of a pair. A few of them could also just turn awkward if Mr. Right was really Mr. Wrong and he decided to hold a grudge against me. So perhaps common ground isn't really as important as just "clicking" in some way.

He must also be rational**. Here I don't mean that everything he does is perfectly thought through and he never makes any questionable decisions. I just mean that he must answer well to reason and arguments. He should also be emotionally mature and able to admit mistakes.

This is a bit long already and it no way near describes the ideal boyfriend. Ideal is also a bit strange. Because in reality something could most likely always be better. But I've described stuff that is important to me. A lot of guys live up to this but in the end it's more about "clicking" in some way, having fun together, and loving each other. That would be an ideal boyfriend even though some things might "rationally" be better.


* They might have statistics on their side here in the sense that girls haven't done that so often. But that doesn't mean we aren't able to do it. When one person can succeed in doing something, it shouldn't come as a huge surprise that other people might be able to do that also. Regardless of gender or what other box they might belong to.
** No imaginary boyfriends here!

Single by choice

I recently decided to become and stay single. Or well … recently is not really the right word. Let me start with a bit of background information from around 5 years ago and up until now. When I was younger, I was quite the whiny teenager. I was absolutely convinced that I needed a boyfriend to be okay or complete or whatever else weird stuff I was thinking at the time. However, I didn't really like myself so I also had a hard time imagining that somebody else would.

Nonetheless, I got a really sweet boyfriend and we lasted about a year and a half before I broke things off. Not long passed before I had a new boyfriend. And by "not long" I mean "less than 14 days". It was a bad move on my part. For one thing I wasn't entirely ready for a new relationship. Another problem was that while I thought I was in love, I really wasn't. I was flattered that he liked me and enjoyed the company and attention. But I wasn't in love. We lasted about 4 months before I broke up. Again I moved on to a new boyfriend within 14 days. This time it lasted around half a year.

By now I was starting to rethink the whole needing a boyfriend thing. I had started liking myself a bit more and figured that it probably would be a good idea to take some time where I stayed single so I could work a bit on myself. But I fell in love. Again. Yeah, you guessed it. Within 14 days I had a new boyfriend. I thought to myself "Well, while it would be ideal to be single, I can work on myself within a relationship as well."

After 6-7 months we decided to move in together in his apartment. I was very much in love with him and we were already almost living together in practice. Just without all my stuff being there. In hindsight it wasn't the best decision I've ever made. While I don't regret anything, we had a great time, I think I moved in with him way too early.

The relationship lasted a bit longer than 2 and a half year before I decided to move on and out. I did get to work on myself during the relationship with great support from my boyfriend and at this point I really did like myself. Further I had started believing in my life as something I had control over, not something that just happened to me. I still very strongly believe in personal responsibility and owning your actions. While you can't control the world around you and what happens to you, you can definitely control your own actions and reactions.

By now I was very certain that I should be single at least for a while. This time it worked better. After 14 days I was still single. My brain tried to tell me I was in love again. However, this time I knew that I get easily infatuated and it doesn't mean a damn thing. Except maybe that I'm easy to impress. :) It was as if my brain needed somebody to crush on. Knowing better, I ignored it and as time passed, so did the need.

After about 2 months of fun with that and with just being me I started casually hooking up with this guy. From the beginning I made it clear that I didn't want to be in a relationship and I didn't want any commitments. Honesty is something that is very important to me. I'm quite verbose about what's going on in my head and I appreciate the same from others since reading thoughts isn't my specialty. He was okay with that and we kept it casual. However, as time progressed we started acting more and more like a couple. I figured that since we already were one in practice we might as well also be one technically. So he became my boyfriend. Even though I was a bit sceptical, I figured that it might not be that bad.

It took me a month to realize that it was. Or well, it wasn't all that bad. It just wasn't what I wanted. So I broke it off and was very happy to find myself single again. Wise from experience I thought that the "I'll try my best to stay single" principle probably wasn't the best solution for me. At some point I would "fall trough" even though it wasn't my intention. Or at least so says the past. So instead I decided to just set a date until which I should remain single. This was back in mid-December and somewhat arbitrarily my choice fell on June 22 2008. So this is my current plan.

I told a friend and she looked at me hesitating a bit then said, "I … don't really think you are able to do that. [pause] I'm willing to make a bet on it." Fully trusting myself I gladly accepted. I also arranged bets with another friend and both my siblings. Looking back at my history I get why people don't think I can do this. I've gotten the reaction "I'll believe it when I see it" a lot. However, I'm a wiser person now and I look forward to cashing in!