2008 Year In Review

2008 was a full 365 Gregorian days, that's for sure. (unless it was a leap year, i don't really pay much attention).

i finished my 1st school year in Beijing. i signed on for 2 more years. i got the flu on Hainan beaches, and i got horrendously hung over in Shanghai. Somehow i got lots of kids to think i was a great teacher, though they pbly didn't realize how much of my enthusiasm was ... a tad forced, shall we say. (Maybe that's the skill of a great teacher).

i had great experiences in India, though they were less pivotal (of course) than from my first trip there, which had totally turned my universe inside out, and threw in a few carbon copies to boot.

i also got dumped in the vacation's afterglow, and that has brought on countless new changes to my life in BJ, mostly good i think.

However, i admit i'm in a pretty pissy mood as i write this, so my overview of the year could be a bit tainted.

I was thinking today about when a few years ago, i was having a heart to heart w/ this drunken teenager, and me and my friend were telling him in all sincerity that the older you get, the better life gets. And i don't know if that rings true anymore. I didn't exactly mean that the passage of time = growing happiness, but at the time i really felt that that was my experience.

Well i guess it was bound to switch up sooner or later, and it's pbly better to get that out of the way before 2009, when the whole planet and its dog might move closer to economic misery.

Anyhow, 2008 was pretty fucking rich in its experiences. Like more than 2002, for sure! And i mostly still think i'm doing a decent job at doing what i'm supposed to do. Somehow. Even if i do have more bad moods and crankiness than i ever have. And even if i punch walls occasionally. And even if the unoriginal words "i hate my job" have started cropping up in between my synapses. And even if i'm drinking and smoking more than i ever have.

Well, actually in the past couple weeks i haven't been drinking or smoking all that much. So i can still claim some sense of responsibility. Though i irresponsibly got my date badly hammered on tequila last week. Oops.

So to sum up. i give 2008 a B. Almost a B+, except that there were too many grammatical errors.