The Decade In Review, Part I of II.
Jan. 12th, 2010 10:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matt_doyleThis is proving much more difficult to summarize than I expected... but I will catch up with the posting I've missed.
2000- The turn of the century was a little bit busy for me. I turned sixteen. I'd just become best friends with (and fallen madly in love with)![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ruby_flu, who remains my best friend to this day. I'd more or less conquered my depression, thanks to pixxiyestyx and co. I got my first job, scooping ice cream at a little counter in the back of an antique store that used to be Wabasha City Hall. I did very badly on the speech team, and decently in small character parts in school plays. I also got into an epic screaming match with my father that ended only when the neighbors called the police, and our landlord had the family evicted. From July through September we were homeless (not a new experience for me but still notable). I got 150 pages into writing a very, very bad novel. I started the long and painful process of raising my horrific GPA by actually doing my homework.
Two of these things sort of stand out as more significant than the rest.
2001- I started doing discussion in speech, and placed in nearly every meet. For about twenty-four hours after September Eleventh I considered joining the military. My dad and I did a road-trip tour of the three colleges I most wanted to attend (Evansville in Indiana, Webster in St. Louis, and Beloit in Wisconsin. I applied and was accepted to all three by that point. However, Webster's English Department was tiny, and Beloit had no tours, no tour guides, no open offices the day we arrived there. Evansville was incredible, offered an exchange semester to England, and had an English faculty member with extra degrees in Russian folklore and Concert Piano Performance (from Juillard!)). I resolved to go to Evansville until I saw the price. I went topixxiyestyx's prom up at the Perpich Center for Arts Education, had probably the best night of my life, at the time, and fell madly in love with artwhoreforhire, though I'm not sure she noticed. Thanks to my oldest online friend, Dani Carlson, I got an LJ. I also wrote a script for a graphic novel (which I still think is good) and 170 pages on a sort-of-okay cyberpunk novel which I may one day revisit.
2002- I graduated high school as a member of the National Honor Society, which I still think is pretty good for a kid who ended his freshman year with a 2.7 GPA. I went topixxiyestyx's prom again and became deeply enamored of a curvy swing-dancing girl named Britta, who wrote me a not-quite love letter that I still carry in my wallet today. I might have dated her, but I have always suspected that artwhoreforhire didn't deliver the note I wrote back to her.
I went to college, which changed my life in about 72 hours. Concordia was my fourth-choice school, selected solely because it gave me enough financial aid and had a bigger English Department than Webster. I never saw tha campus until after I was enrolled. I met and started datingkalishra, I joined the Gaming Club, I discovered I was bisexual (my gay roommate had known this since he first spoke to me, but it took me months to figure it out. The process of figuring it out, thankfully, had nothing to do with said roommate, who I did not get along with). I started joining LJ RPGs, which was actually the single most important decision I would make that year. I started writing Running In Her Veins.
2003- I broke up withkalishra about a week into the year, or she broke up with me – our first date after Christmas break, each of us had planned to break it gently to the other, which worked out nicely. I started dating handgun that same night – a girl I had met through LJ RPing. This was the start of a pattern. I did very well in my freshman year, and because of a depressed friend, decided to double major in English Writing and Psychology. I played D & D an average of once every two days. I went home for the summer and found that losing my autonomy was horrible. I worked as a dishwasher in a bar. I visited handgun in Virginia and had an amazing week – we made out until we were horribly chapped, she dislocated my jaw with a kiss, and I very enthusiastically lost my virginity. I went back to college and spent the first of several years debating the nature of heaven with my roommate Chris, as well as discovering that I knew too many Ryans – I had thought I was arranging to room with Ryan Gustafson, and wound up rooming with Ryan Speiss because of a miscommunication over whose IM address I had. Speiss was a much more entertaining roommate.
handgun broke up with me, and less than a day later I had started dating lesyeuxouverts, realized I was emotionally unstable, far too much so to date, broke up with her, went to an Evanescence concert the next day with kalishra, started a very informal relationship that involved a lot of making out and not much else, broke things off with her after about a month, and immediately (within 48 hours) started dating lesyeuxouverts again.
If it helps, it hurts my head, too.
2004- I spent most of May in France withlesyeuxouverts and her amazing family. This visit has since been summarized as “I saw London, I saw France, I saw Sarah's underpants,” or, alternately, as “we'll always have Paris.” Paris was amazing. I visited, as I recall, every art museum in the area, as well as spending one day in London and one in Marseilles. I had ridiculous amounts of sex. I discovered that peppermint oil in shower gel was a very bad idea.
Upon returning to the US, I moved up to the Twin Cities withpixxiyestyx and her then-fiance now-husband. Jobless and working at Labor Ready, I dropped down to 145 pounds of underdeveloped muscle and zero percent body fat, collected a great many of my favorite anecdotes, and was under quite a lot of stress.
Junior year in college didn't start terribly eventfully, to my memory at least – I had a lot of fun with my roommates, and toward the end of the year noticed that my relationship withlesyeuxouverts was gradually getting rockier.
I'm more than willing to flesh out anything that's only touched on or coyly implied, assuming anyone takes an interest in my tangled history. I'm an egotist, "me" is one of my favorite discussion topics, and I have very little sense of privacy.
2000- The turn of the century was a little bit busy for me. I turned sixteen. I'd just become best friends with (and fallen madly in love with)
ruby_flu, who remains my best friend to this day. I'd more or less conquered my depression, thanks to pixxiyestyx and co. I got my first job, scooping ice cream at a little counter in the back of an antique store that used to be Wabasha City Hall. I did very badly on the speech team, and decently in small character parts in school plays. I also got into an epic screaming match with my father that ended only when the neighbors called the police, and our landlord had the family evicted. From July through September we were homeless (not a new experience for me but still notable). I got 150 pages into writing a very, very bad novel. I started the long and painful process of raising my horrific GPA by actually doing my homework.Two of these things sort of stand out as more significant than the rest.
2001- I started doing discussion in speech, and placed in nearly every meet. For about twenty-four hours after September Eleventh I considered joining the military. My dad and I did a road-trip tour of the three colleges I most wanted to attend (Evansville in Indiana, Webster in St. Louis, and Beloit in Wisconsin. I applied and was accepted to all three by that point. However, Webster's English Department was tiny, and Beloit had no tours, no tour guides, no open offices the day we arrived there. Evansville was incredible, offered an exchange semester to England, and had an English faculty member with extra degrees in Russian folklore and Concert Piano Performance (from Juillard!)). I resolved to go to Evansville until I saw the price. I went to
pixxiyestyx's prom up at the Perpich Center for Arts Education, had probably the best night of my life, at the time, and fell madly in love with artwhoreforhire, though I'm not sure she noticed. Thanks to my oldest online friend, Dani Carlson, I got an LJ. I also wrote a script for a graphic novel (which I still think is good) and 170 pages on a sort-of-okay cyberpunk novel which I may one day revisit.2002- I graduated high school as a member of the National Honor Society, which I still think is pretty good for a kid who ended his freshman year with a 2.7 GPA. I went to
pixxiyestyx's prom again and became deeply enamored of a curvy swing-dancing girl named Britta, who wrote me a not-quite love letter that I still carry in my wallet today. I might have dated her, but I have always suspected that artwhoreforhire didn't deliver the note I wrote back to her.I went to college, which changed my life in about 72 hours. Concordia was my fourth-choice school, selected solely because it gave me enough financial aid and had a bigger English Department than Webster. I never saw tha campus until after I was enrolled. I met and started dating
kalishra, I joined the Gaming Club, I discovered I was bisexual (my gay roommate had known this since he first spoke to me, but it took me months to figure it out. The process of figuring it out, thankfully, had nothing to do with said roommate, who I did not get along with). I started joining LJ RPGs, which was actually the single most important decision I would make that year. I started writing Running In Her Veins.2003- I broke up with
kalishra about a week into the year, or she broke up with me – our first date after Christmas break, each of us had planned to break it gently to the other, which worked out nicely. I started dating handgun that same night – a girl I had met through LJ RPing. This was the start of a pattern. I did very well in my freshman year, and because of a depressed friend, decided to double major in English Writing and Psychology. I played D & D an average of once every two days. I went home for the summer and found that losing my autonomy was horrible. I worked as a dishwasher in a bar. I visited handgun in Virginia and had an amazing week – we made out until we were horribly chapped, she dislocated my jaw with a kiss, and I very enthusiastically lost my virginity. I went back to college and spent the first of several years debating the nature of heaven with my roommate Chris, as well as discovering that I knew too many Ryans – I had thought I was arranging to room with Ryan Gustafson, and wound up rooming with Ryan Speiss because of a miscommunication over whose IM address I had. Speiss was a much more entertaining roommate.handgun broke up with me, and less than a day later I had started dating lesyeuxouverts, realized I was emotionally unstable, far too much so to date, broke up with her, went to an Evanescence concert the next day with kalishra, started a very informal relationship that involved a lot of making out and not much else, broke things off with her after about a month, and immediately (within 48 hours) started dating lesyeuxouverts again.If it helps, it hurts my head, too.
2004- I spent most of May in France with
lesyeuxouverts and her amazing family. This visit has since been summarized as “I saw London, I saw France, I saw Sarah's underpants,” or, alternately, as “we'll always have Paris.” Paris was amazing. I visited, as I recall, every art museum in the area, as well as spending one day in London and one in Marseilles. I had ridiculous amounts of sex. I discovered that peppermint oil in shower gel was a very bad idea.Upon returning to the US, I moved up to the Twin Cities with
pixxiyestyx and her then-fiance now-husband. Jobless and working at Labor Ready, I dropped down to 145 pounds of underdeveloped muscle and zero percent body fat, collected a great many of my favorite anecdotes, and was under quite a lot of stress.Junior year in college didn't start terribly eventfully, to my memory at least – I had a lot of fun with my roommates, and toward the end of the year noticed that my relationship with
lesyeuxouverts was gradually getting rockier.I'm more than willing to flesh out anything that's only touched on or coyly implied, assuming anyone takes an interest in my tangled history. I'm an egotist, "me" is one of my favorite discussion topics, and I have very little sense of privacy.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-01-12 05:30 pm (UTC)In all seriousness, though, this is a very cool idea. :)
no subject
Date: 2010-01-12 07:28 pm (UTC)Technically, right at the very end of this post I should mention the last time I saw you before this New Year's Eve, but I don't recall it being a very eventful visit, just a lot of fun.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-12 06:13 pm (UTC)I am kind of dreading the next installment, in which I know I behave terribly. I am still very very embarrassed about it. I may one day get over this, I'm not sure.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-12 06:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-12 07:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-12 07:26 pm (UTC)And while the recap is hopefully pretty matter-of-fact, I'm happy with where I am and who I am in life, and for better or worse I wouldn't be here without you, so I only very rarely hold it against you. I'm glad to have moved past it and to be your friend again.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-12 07:29 pm (UTC)Looking forward to the next part. >_>
no subject
Date: 2010-01-12 07:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-13 08:56 pm (UTC)ps sorry i haven't returned your phone calls... things have been really hectic and blah lately. :P
no subject
Date: 2010-01-13 09:12 pm (UTC)I have way too many word documents on my external hard drive. Yesterday IO sorted through a couple dozen chatlogs (about half of them with you), and just now I was reading through the pages and pages of thought-provoking or funny quotes you sent me. Forget posts, I have the raw material and research to do a scholarly paper. Maybe a book.