Just now I was looking at some old journal entries that I wrote five years ago on another site. For some reason I thought "Avant Pop? Avant NOT!" was hilarious and then I remembered that I had read the Avant Pop manifesto. I googled it and re-read it and saw this (bold my own).
"Without even knowing it, the Avant-Pop movement has been secretly generating interest and support for a few years now but has recently become more exposed with the successful breakthrough of the sub-pop alternative music scene, the publication of alternative trade paperbacks like Black Ice Books, and the release of low-budget alternative media projects like *Wax, Or The Discovery of Television Among the Bees*. The future of fiction is *now* as we, its most active practitioners, automatically unwrite it."
This is how I know I chose the right major in college. Little did I know it then, but a year ago I took a class where we actually watched "Wax, or the Discovery of Television Among Bees." Except I had forgotten all about the Avant Pop manifesto by then. Anyway, I don't even really know if Avant Pop is really a "thing" or not as I've never really heard it anypalce else. I think Mark Amerika was searching for the term "cyberpunk" but just couldn't come up with it.
I remember 43 things when it just started to become popular, so instead of making a new account, I tried the username "Mariko" and an old password, just on the off chance that I made an account. Voila! Turns out I made an account five years ago because I'm an internet ninja.
It also turns out that I've accomplished almost everything on the list (which wasn't written with serious intent; I was just playing around with the 43 things interface at the time). I was rather surprised at how irrelevant my goals from 2004 are now. It was like opening a time capsule. The things I've accomplished include the following:
knit a sweater - I knit a turquoise sweater a couple of years ago
get a better paying job - I now own my own web business and work from l'apartement
make a zine - I did this in '06
Sleep more - work from home + being my own boss + graduating from college = sleep all I want!
Improve my writing - my writing is much better than it was 4 years ago (but this is an ongoing goal)
Things I didn't accomplish include:
learn to knit lace - My perspective on this now is: why bother when you can buy it for 3 bucks a yard on etsy?
read all the books I haven't read that are sitting on the bookshelf - Never going to happen anyway (that's the spirit!)
So I deleted everything that I wrote there before and made new goals.
Anyway, the reason I'm poking around on 43 things which I originally found boring and pointless is that now that I have a lot of free time, I'm having trouble setting goals for myself on any kind of time frame. Recently though, the mental inertia has lifted a bit and I have a bunch of plans for things to do in April. So far for April I'm going to two concerts, some cinefamily screenings, some lectures at the Hammer museum, and I'm going to launch an advertising campaign for my business. Etc. Hopefully I can set monthly goals for myself so that the list remains fresh.
