Hey There, 2011!

Around this time last year, I made a list of 10 things I’d learned during 2009, and, at the end, I appended a list of 10 things I hoped to learn during 2010. Well, 2010’s been and gone, which means it’s time to see how I did. As a wise man once said, the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley, and I’m no expection. However, as another wise man once said, whoa-o, we’re halfway there, whoa-o, livin’ on a prayer, and moving part of the way toward a goal is no failure. Unless maybe you are Wile E. Coyote, and your goal is to leap across the chasm to the other cliff.

1. How to submit and give a presentation at an academic conference.

Like so many things that initially seem daunting, this wasn’t as difficult as I expected. The hard part was getting up the confidence to submit my abstract to the conferences in the first place. After that, putting together a Powerpoint, practicing magic tricks (yes, magic tricks), and speaking in front of a room full of people was easy.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. Practicing the magic tricks was easy. Figuring out which magic tricks worked best for which sizes and types of audiences was hard. But I think I got it by the last conference I went to, where people kept approaching me to ask how I’d done it until the last second of the last day.

2. How to start and maintain friendly conversations with people I don’t know or don’t know well.

Still working on this one, and to be honest, I’m pretty sure it’ll be something I’m working on for the rest of my life. This is partly because it involves not being scared I’ll say something stupid or talking myself into believing that the other person would rather go eat a bag of nails than converse with me. It’s also difficult to remember to stay quiet when I have nothing to say, or to admit to not knowing anything instead of faking conversation on a subject completely unfamiliar to me, or not to desperately want to flip open whatever book I’m reading or DS game I’m playing instead.

But the less positive I am about stuff like this, the less likely I am to practice and therefore to develop these skills. So I do think I’m getting better than I was last year, in part because I make myself have more confidence, and in part because I spend more time with friends who are absolute superstars at this kind of thing. Watching what they do helps me learn how to work on those skills myself. Yes, I am the Borg. Resistance is futile. Your social and personal distinctiveness will be added to my own.

3. How to switch from skating forward in one direction to skating backward in that same direction without having to stop first.

Again, don’t want to cross this one off because I’m still working on it. I can do this at a very slow speed, and I can definitely do it much better than I could last year, but I still need more practice and confidence. I did sign up for power skating lessons this coming term (hooray!), so maybe I’ll feel like I can cross this one off the list by the summer.

4. How to play The Orange Box and Portal without dying, turning off the computer in fright at Ravenholm, and/or getting stuck in the corner every two seconds.

Another “Well, I started…“. I’m still not terribly good at FPS-style navigation, but I played the first half of Half Life 2, and it was fun even though I died like, all the time. The trouble here is that I bought a Wii this fall and have since been more interested in playing GameCube Zelda and Paper Mario games than in PC gaming. In fact, I believe I now have 4 Zelda games for various consoles that I haven’t yet even begun, let alone finished. So I’ll get around to all the lovely time-wasters on my PC sooner or later… it’s just difficult to pick tiny laptop screen over large TV.

… I got the China Shop and Better Off Dead achievements on Plants vs. Zombies. That’s almost as good, right?

5. How to work with a literary agent and editor.

Surprise, surprise: another one where I feel like I’ve made lots of progress but not enough to entitle me to cross it off the list. Are you sensing a pattern here in my time management?

Seriously, though, I feel like I’m in a much better place here than I was at the same time last year, as pertains to my own skills and writing habits. I have a series of short stories that I feel has a lot of possibilities, a “duh! Why didn’t I think of this before?” super-duper revision plan for my novel Bad Light, a new YA sci fi manuscript halfway through a first draft, and lots of stuff to ponder over for my other novel Our Man Tom. And… I dunno. I just feel like, mentally, I’m more prepared than Me of the Past to see being a writer as a real career — not just as a pipe dream to fantasize about, but as a real job that a real person like me could actually have and do every day.

6. How to speak and read German and/or Yiddish.

This one, at least, I can honestly say I haven’t worked towards. Sorry. Really should. I just discovered that we’re allowed to take whatever undergrad courses we want to, though, so look out!

7. How to fence (the way that involves swords, not pickets).

Eeerrr… Also haven’t started. No excuses on New Years, so I won’t go into why not, but I do have a couple schools’ websites bookmarked. Maybe this summer.

8. How to wear make-up and/or a dress without feeling like I’m wearing a clown costume.

Now this is a weird one — I honestly don’t know whether I’ve been working on this or not. I think I wore make-up a grand total of 0 times this year, so that part of it is definitely out. I wore a dress significantly more often, and without feeling stupid, so maybe that counts? I don’t know. But I don’t have to wear make-up, and I don’t want to wear make-up, and now I feel comfortable with that, so why do I even care about the first part of this in the first place? I think I’m going to cross this one off the list until such time as I feel that wearing make-up is important to me.

9. How to shoot a revolver.

The U of T revolver club is gone, so now where do I look? Online searches have been fruitless so far. There’s gotta be some place in Toronto I can make this happen. Another summer project.

10. How to find a decent apartment in Toronto. Anyone? Bueller?

Done! And I do love my apartment, especially the part where for the first time in my life, my work desk and my entertainment centre are not in the same room as my bed. OMG, this is revolutionizing my life! My super is, um, super about responding to repair requests, there’s a pool and a gym in the building, and downstairs is a cinema and a subway station.

I guess if there’s one downside, it’s that my apartment itself is sort of small for having large numbers of people over, but that depends entirely on your perspective on personal space.

So that was 2010. Now, instead of keeping my to-do list to a constant number of items, I consider items that have not been fulfilled to be carryover work to the next time period. Which means that, despite feeling like I’ve only crossed 3 items off the list for 2010, I still want to add 10 more things to learn for 2011. Here they are:

1. How not to buy or borrow any more video games until I’ve finished the ones I already have and/or sold or returned the ones I have no interest in playing.
2. How to hire temp employees for my small business.
3. How to go up by at least one big weight on all the weight machines I currently use. This means you, Preacher Curl!!!!
4. On that note… how to work all the muscles I currently work on the weight machines with equivalent free-weight exercises.
5.  All the information in the dozens of unread books currently on my shelves. (I did this a few years ago, but now I have more books! I AM A MOEBIUS LIBRARIAN.)
6. How to have at least $5000 saved by the beginning of next school year (September).
7. How to do a cartwheel.
8. How to stop on my left foot while skating. (sigh)
9. How to design and build stage illusions for a production without access to a specially built space.
10. How to do a French Drop.