tracing back the steps

i'm procrastinating at the moment, so i'm going to look back at the posts i made the past year and see how the year has treated me.

january was when i first realized that i no longer have any interest in studying physics. it was after this that i started trying to find loopholes so i would not have to do physics but could still get out with a physics master's. it was a dilemmatic few weeks, but i ended up giving it up for good and decided to pursue my studio idea. i also made this clear to my graduate advisor at the moment, and turned out it was a bad idea because he seemed to have lost respect for me. this month was also the first time i was assigned to teach discussion sections and not lab sections, and about 2 weeks in, a student came to me crying. i also started reading gintama.

in february, i bought my first bristol pad from the UCI bookstore. it was 18x24 in size. this is the same pad i used to draw 2 of the biggest pieces i've drawn so far: the enies lobby tribute, and the thriller bark diner. i also kept the tradition of posting what was and is still the funniest valentine's day card i've ever come across on the 14th. towards the end of the month, i was lucky enough that the chicken wings i bought at albertson's came with its feathers. it amused me to no end and was an awesome way to wrap up a month.

march was the month when i finally decided to give up on physics research and pursue something else, figured out why women are so complex, attempted for the first time a complete CG drawing (which i was unhappy about), and started my enies lobby tribute on the bristol board i bought the previous month.

i started off my april with BLADES OF GLORY, which kept me laughing for a good month, celebrated an epic manchester united win in europe over silly roma with a startling 7-1 scoreline, and finished the enies lobby tribute in the middle of the month.

that thing then sold like roasted chestnuts during holiday season at AX.

in may, i discovered the awesomeness that is HOT FUZZ, suffered through early summer heat, and all the spring lovin' in the air made me fell in love with kewpie mayo. i also tried to start a new weekly 4panel comic, but that lasted about 4 weeks and died away. i also met joanna in a manga class, who turned out to be really good at coloring traditionally with copic. so we started a weekly doodlefest session.

june was filled with these sessions. i would go to coffeebean near where she lived with paper, pencil, and pens and just started drawing for a good few hours. since AX was coming up, i finished a set of 6 colored one piece postcards with jo helping me pick the colors. eggy also came down from montreal to hang out with me for about 2 weeks before AX. i also managed to break my gmail.

and there came AX in july. four days of hanging out with the awesomest people who share the same geeky interest in manga and comics in general. i made about $1000 from the prints i had, but $500 of that went to printing, $200 went into lodging and registration, and the last $300 was spent on buying a set of 72 copic markers. on top of that, i had to spend money to eat and to buy toys (got tashigi POP), so the $1000 was easily wasted. good thing was, i had a lot of print leftovers that i can sell again at the next con i go to, which should hopefully be anime north in may of 2008.

august wasn't very eventful. i picked up a hot fuzz DVD on the same day the shaun of the dead DVD came in the mail, and i was a happy man for an entire month. i also learned that the UCI physics department gave away free office supplies to grad students and faculties, including PILOT PRECISE V5 rolling-ball pens that come in five colors: red, blue, black, green, and purple. so i took advantage of that and started sketching in pens instead of pencils. by the end of the month i completely gave up pencils.

classes started again at the end of september, but it didn't make much of a difference since i was teaching summer school until mid-september, but i did draw my first harry potter fanart for aimee's birthday, learn what bukkake really means, and bought my first car.

i broke gmail once more in october. this time it actually told me that i need to either get a new account, or just buy some more space off them. i also came across the most hilarious football picture i've ever seen, and had to sniff ashes for a few days due to the fires all across southern california. luckily y-con was on the same week and i thus ditched southern california for the fresh, queer san franciscan weather. my deviantart page also hit 100,000 pageviews at the end of this month. october 29th, to be exact. my e-penis is now over 100,000 strong.

november was, and will always be a special month because my birthday fell on this month. it was also special because my close cousin passed away in an accident on my 2003 birthday. until this moment i still don't know how to celebrate it. but i was productive this month, creating two doodle journals on my trip to y-con, and also coming across an old blog entry about an e^x and a constant that walked into a cave. it had me in stitches when i first came across it in 2003, and it still cracked me up like no other nerdy joke in 2007.

then december came around, and it only took thirty-one days for the year to be over. since the year was about to end, i spent the month just enjoying life and sketching with my free colorful pens a lot. i also kept the tradition of drawing christmas cards for special people of the year. i then caught cold sometime towards the end of december and i coughed and sneezed my way till the end of 2007.


that was long.

now for 2008. i've never made any new year's resolution under the belief that resolutions are like rules, they're only meant to be broken. using this life philosophy, i have maintained a 100% record of never breaking any new year's resolution, simply because i've never made any. but i think the term "resolution" is rather narrow, since it focuses on fixing the stuff that didn't go well the previous year. so i think this year instead of making resolutions, i'm going to set some GOALS. let's see, this year, i'm going to:

1. (this is probably going to be the hardest) procrastinate less and be more productive. at the moment i'm already procrastinating by typing up this entry, but i'm going to aim to do at least SOMETHING every moment that i'm awake. i've spent last year sitting down on my chair thinking about what to do and never starting it (wait-wait-plan instead of plan-start-finish), so this year instead of thinking, i'm gonna try to actually do the bloody thing instead.

2. finish the comics i plan on doing for anthology. oh, and get it published.

3. live a healthier life: eat more vegetables, exercise more. considering the fact that i DON'T exercise at all, just a little bit of exercise would have accomplished this goal. how easy.

4. finish another big spread before anime expo.

5. graduate and get the hell out of school.

6. go to church regularly again. i hardly went to church last year, although i did go to church weekly when i was in sandiego.

7. live a less nocturnal life (oh look, it's already 1am).

8. get a girlfriend. i'm pretty contented with a single life at the moment, but it does get lonely at times.

so, any eligible bachelorette wants to get goal #8 accomplished early? =D