Random Thoughts: August 10th, 2017

• I haven't written one of these in nearly three years.
• I'm tired as fuck. Dissatisfaction with my professional life doesn't properly cover what I'm going through.
• Summer's fading fast. As I get older, I find I miss it a little more. This is coming from a winter guy. Not sure what all of that means.
• Now's the best possible time to be a wrestling fan. Never in our lifetime has so much been available to everyone. Everywhere you turn, there's a streaming service. And if you're not satisfied with that, YouTube fills in pretty much every gap in your wrestling interests.
  And that's the problem: there's too much.
  I guess that's a good problem to have.
  New Japan Pro Wrestling is near the end of their annual G1 Climax tournament. There are 19 events this year. I only made through to night four. Each event has a packed undercard with shit that might affect future matchups. These things are 2-5 hours long! I don't have the time or the fucking attention span. I just wanna watch YouTube. Easily digestible YouTube moments.
• An additionally depressing thing about pro wrestling: there's a divide between the folks that prefer the days of kayfabe ("kayfabe" being the illusion that everything in wrestling is real and not a pre-determined athletic contest) – even as goofy as things could get back then – and those that laud the antics of Kenny Omega*, Chuck Taylor, and the Internet famous Joey Ryan. Loyalties are gettin' divided. It saddens me a lil' bit. I love pro wrestling, but what Joey does is the type of shit that makes me embarrassed to be a fan. It kinda makes me wanna just...quit.
• I don't do drugs, but if you see me with a bag of Peanut Butter M&Ms, things ain't goin' well.
• I feel a little better having written this out. I'm gonna like, do something else. Maybe go to bed early (Yeah, right, asshole.).

*Disclosure: I'm a Kenny Omega fan, and he's from my hometown. I love what he's doing right now and can overlook the wrestling-a-child thing, but he's one of the dudes that comes up in conversation in regard to ridiculous spots.

2017 Resolutions

New year, new me, same ol' resolutions. Looking back on last year's list, I really did succeed in eating more poutine. I have to set different goals.

1. Financial Management. Me and money. Our relationship could always be better. I haven't budgeted in AGES, and I know it'll help.
2. Health. No more eating every damn thing I see. Back to DDPYoga. Yeah, I know I said that last year.
3. Creativity. I can say that I love drawing now, but it really comes through when I'm actually drawing. And I'm okay with not drawing every day, and I no longer beat myself up for not putting pencil to paper for long periods of time. (Related note: these tweets.) Also, I need to get back into practicing the art of sign painting. I don't want to lose whatever skill I gained under Rick Wagner's tutelage. I didn't finish Inktober, and I got down on myself, but I know I'm not the only one.
4. Tidiness. I feel like I've been doing nothing but cleaning for most of the year. That said, my wife and I did a cleaning blitz just before my brother and his wife came over, and we were both taken by the results. Now, I have to tackle my usual nemesis: the workspace. Get it clean and maintain it.
5. Music. I've listened to Spotify a lot more and realized that I could come up with at least a top six of albums. Not bad. As always, I need to listen to more. More physical copies of albums, too.
6. Japanese. A friend of mine is learning the language and he's working hard at it. I find that inspiring. Also inspiring, this article. It's never too late to learn, and with the amount of New Japan and Crunchyroll anime I've been watching, it'd be great to get a grasp of the language. I'm dying to visit there again, too.