The defining point of my year, probably

Over the Christmas holidays I became really lazy and something of a hermit. The main reasons were: I’m lazy without any special reason, and everyone I know from Madrid went away for the holidays. But it’s time to pull things back into focus for 2009, because a new year, dawn and era are upon us. Thus, old habits will go away for at least a few hours. New habits will start, commencing with: a reasonable bed time. After a few late nights with friends (before they left), I just never got back into my routine of waking up at a sensible hour, and with the added freezing house factor, I’d stay in bed all day with my computer. The other day I went to sleep at 7am. Don’t ask what time I woke up at.

For New Years I had a blast. I went to Sol (the Spanish word for ‘sun’, but it’s also in the middle of the city) to watch the big yellow ball thing drop (which wasn’t the sun, though maybe there’s a link there, and by the way, we had an extra second in the year, did you notice? I did!). We watched the crowd hang around for a while and then we loitered, went back to some guy’s house who I don’t remember clearly (I was sober, he wasn’t, and after showing us in he promptly left to find some of his friends and bring them back to his place, and we never saw him again). We played some cards, talked of traditions for New Years in other countries, and I had to field some Q&A time for Chinese New Year, since I lived in HK for 6 years. I know shit about Chinese New Year, except that there is a lion dance and fire crackers. We waited for public transport to kick back into gear, I came home at a staggering early hour, but considering my usual bed time these days I wasn’t tired. As I was coming home I thought about the only sensible way of getting my routine back to normal: do an all-nighter. Firstly, that’s dumb. I tried this crazy brained idea 2 years ago and failed, which threw me off even worse. I made it to 10am before crashing. Do you know what it’s like waking up at 7pm and going to bed after dawn? IT SUCKS! It throws every part of your body out of wack! It took me almost 2 weeks to push through, staying awake for an extra hour or two every day, and finally being able to wake up at 5am (waking up at 11pm is nuts, you don’t want to try it). 5am was great. I exercised, I ran around the block, I felt ALIVE! All of those endorphins that I had neglected over the years came back to give me a hug. And then a month later I fucked up my knee and wasn’t able to run again. But now I’m here to try it again, and I think I have two advantages this time: 1) I did an all nighter back in November when I went to see Elena, so I know it’s possible. 2) Last time I didn’t drink coffee. Now I do. The effects of caffeine last for 4 hours. So: WISH ME LUCK!

Onto the bigger picture. Back in June I thought it’d be a good idea to have monthly challenges. I had tried yearly goals before and they went to hell, but monthly challenges seemed interesting. The idea is: choose something I’ve had a slight interest in and go crazy with it for one month. Then move onto the next crazy thing. For example: learn where every country is on the map, read a Shakespeare play every day, write a poem every day (try haiku’s, they’re easier), do a new recipe every day (I recommend having lots of snack recipes, quick and easy), learn a new origami thing every day. For 2009 I would like to get back into this, because even though I only did it for 2 months, it was a lot of fun, and a refreshing change of pace. Not sure yet what January’s is. But at the very least I’d like to read at least 1 book in Spanish every month. I can’t believe that I didn’t do that in 2008. Stupid me. Maybe I should double up on reading to make up for my laziness, but I’ll go easy for now.

Oh, and since the holidays started I haven’t shaved. At some point I decided that I was growing a beard, but that was mostly because I wasn’t shaving and thought I’d try it out. I had a go a few years ago and didn’t like it, but then I didn’t give it enough time. I’m at least 2 weeks into it, and it definitely screams STUDENT ON HOLIDAY. I have a week until my roomies start to return, so it’ll be interesting to see their reaction.

Hmmm, maybe it’s all the caffeine suddenly kicking in, but I thought of a revolutionary idea for 2009. How cool would it be to have a comet or a star named after me? BOOYAKA! (and for only US$100....the mind is a whizzing) Now, what would I call it? I think, really, it’d have to be “Oisin’s Ego”. That would sum it up quite well, me thinks. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We are approaching Oisin’s Ego, please return to your seats and we thank you for flying with us.”