2015 in Review, 2016 in View.

january 2nd, 2016

For someone who claimed her major goal for 2015 was “fuck goals” i did a lot.

i proposed to Vlad in April and in August we got married.
i ran a marathon in October.
In November i started volunteer tutoring two kids in Rogers Park in math and reading.
i completed 40 weeks of improv training at Second City.
i tried stand‑up comedy.
i auditioned for Jeopardy.
i toured three cities as a traveling poet and nearly broke even :)
i competed and clobbered in Write Club.
i headlined at the Green Mill Uptown Poetry Slam.
i performed a lot a lot a lot a lot.

i wrote 22 blog posts here, and 10 more at Tacky Harper's Cryptic Clues.
i posted 12 videos to YouTube.
i wrote 4 new poems.
i epublished emotions on the major estores*
*a nasty experience i am unlikely to repeat
i took my Canon AE‑1 out for some spins.
i built or worked on eight new websites.

i maintained alcohol sobriety.
i worked out 151 times, which i'm VERY proud of! Exercise these days necessary for ensuring access to basic adult coping mechanisms.

2016 resolutions and fantasies

This year i have a million! Resolutionfiesta! Fantasyfalooza!

FASHION 2016
The main goal this year is fASHioN. i want to be dressed each day like, “hey! Where are you going!” and i'll say, “i'm dressed up for life. i'm dressed up for this conversation.”

writing
Of course more Tacky Harper's posts, blog posts. In my fantasy, Tacky Harper's turns into a book deal.

For years, Vlad and i have fancied writing The Wealth of Peasants. i want to write it in a fugue state with my muse Sweet V by my side, self‑publish, and deliver to Notorious Marcel as a graduation present.

i want to publish homoerotica on Amazon under the name “Lovelace,” much inspired by this Harper's article from February 2014. Women are making money hand over fist publishing books that will never, never ever, be reviewed in the NYTimes Review of Books. Watch how the women laugh, NYTimes. Print media is sinking into the sea, but romance novelists are rocking out on the bough of the ship.

i have a stage play in mind about Ann Coulter. Ann Coulter is compelling to me in a way that's hard to explain. Like: she called President Obama a retard. That word! “retard”  She called John Edwards a faggot. That word! Her political awakening as she tells it was in the ‘90s while working on the Paula Jones case and she was outraged by how the Left ignored Bill Clinton's history of sexual harassment and alleged rape. Which is something that also outrages me, and here Ann Coulter and i are in a strange nest of ourobouri where the extremes meet at a single point and the snake consumes itself.

In the play's opening scene she sits in front of a vanity mirror, tears and mascara running down her face, brushing her hair, singing, “she's so lucky / she's a star / but she cries cries criessssss / in her lonely heaaaaaaa-ar-tuh …”

More projects to write for screen: THE BLANKET THIEF, DR DOG, GAY SUPERHEROES.

classes, lessons
There are many things that i do without having had one formal lesson. This year i want some lessons! i want to take a Photoshop class, a graphic design class, a video editing class, a dialects [accents] class. i want to take guitar lessons. i've been playing guitar for 20 years, but i can't rip out a solo. i want to rip out some solos! i want to take jazz piano lessons. i want to noodle up a jazz piano storm at will.

i want to hold decent conversations in Romanian. Vlad bought me Pimsleur Romanian lessons which are excellent. Highly recommended. Embedded in the language lessons are interesting cultural lessons. Like: one of the early lessons was playing both sides of a conversation in which a man is asking a woman to have a drink, and the woman says she doesn't want to have a drink, and the man asks what time will we have a drink then (8 o'clock? 9 o'clock?), and she says that no she doesn't want a drink any time. And finally the conversation ends with her saying, “you don't understand,” and he says, “what don't I understand?” and she says, “you don't understand Romanian.”

For whom was this conversation meant? The men who might insist? The women who might need to defend themselves? i wasn't sure! But several of the conversations seem to come with a warning: “pay attention. You can't expect the person you're speaking Romanian with to have your best interests in mind.” cf this bit of dialogue:

computers business
i want to learn Ruby and Python. i want to develop with Laravel and Django and Jekyll and Drupal. i want to put some of the glorious modules in paper.js to practical use.

This year marks seven years of working for myself. i used to joke that i'd settle down with a company when i found a boss who's better than i am. In 2015 i called off the search. Now i'm thinking about developing my business to be strong enough and well‑managed enough such that *i* am the boss.

travel
Not so much resolution as fantasy, but i'd love to visit Oregon and LA and Romania (family), Japan (honeymoon), and the Bahamas (beach).

keep
Keep sobriety. Keep studying for Jeopardy. Keep working out. Keep tutoring. Keep working on our marriage every day (practice loving every day).