I love to do lists, but I realized I wasn’t getting enough done. I know I can push myself harder, get things done both efficiently and quickly. Things can change for me without struggling with this change in life. I can be more liberal in my thoughts. I can be this amazing person I know I can be. And if I move faster and swifter, this will give me time to actually have fun as well.

One thing I realized is that I have to return to this website and blog. Get my thoughts out. I know that I’m actually the only person reading this but I don’t care. I’ve read previous posts at different times and I learned something about myself. Mostly good stuff of course.

At this point, I’m still young. I shouldn’t be putting myself in a rut. I can make my life the ideal I’m thinking about. I can dream and dream big. I can succeed. I can.

Now I thought maybe, they’d get some NBC related people but the whole cast of characters ran the gamut from CW to (now) Lifetime. I guess we couldn’t get away with no vampire representation these days.

Either way, it’s my first official day as a graduate student. And I have no clue what the campus really looks like. So it’s time to get lost. I’ll see y’all later.

- Paz

One (if not several) of the other squadder’s posts links like blog updates. I realized, “Hey! That’s not such a bad idea!” So I’m play testing it this week. I mean, it’s not plagiarism because it’s my own articles. I could have thought about it myself… We’ll see how everything turns out and if I’m actually dedicated enough to actually get on the ball.

I like my website. The design is questionable, but that’s because I like rearranging things often. Stagnancy with websites is silly, people change, design aesthetics shift, and the like. Even my alma mater has changed their website, logo, and added (or replaced, I’m not too sure) their mascot. Sadly their new mascot, Hugo, will be called “Hurley” in my head.

Well, I’ve been busy, like every time my blog slows down. This time it was in the name of fashion. My New Paltz friends over at JAM Asia asked me (me?) of all people if I could help out with their fashion and talent show and I, being the nice person that I am, wholeheartedly agreed. Here’s an image of my work:

Bota rocking my wedding dress I made

I called the scene Harajuku Wedding. Mostly just an excuse to design that wedding dress. Well, if you wanna call it that.

I’ve also applied to Grad School during my short hiatus blogging. Of course, I’ve decided to put all my eggs in one basket, so if that goes blech, then I’m pretty much screwed on that part.

Finally, I spent the last weekend up in Plattsburgh with Mark. We stared at old cars. Like this one:

The museum started off as fans of Loziers. It was quite a quaint place.

Anywho, I’m back. Hopefully for a longer period of time.

- Designing some stuff for Jam Asia – Fashion scene…harajuku wedding…a lot of stumbles
- Grad School – Just applying is a toughie. I hate my personal statement, but it needs two more revisions until I’m confident about it.
- General Life – You know…sometimes you forget you have a blog. I swear I know I should have updates, but I forget. Sorry.

Here you go: to make you feel better:

Oh Asians…

Eric is under the impression that I have an upper respiratory infection. I’m still not sure because I didn’t have a runny nose this whole time. It’s ironic because Eric apparently caught this “upper respiratory infection” from another source (thankfully not from yours truly) and also is only hacking up phlegm.

There were years that I was sick and I thought: maybe I’ll take a lot of vitamins. This year I decided mostly that I would just drink a lot of water and hope to pee out my colds. I still felt sick, but now I had the bladder of a 70-year-old man.

One thing that truly made me feel better was any form of humor. Whether it being Kathy Griffin dressing up as Kate Gosselin, that video of the stuttering football player on CollegeHumor, or pictures of true Fail, I didn’t care if I was hacking up phlegm as I was watching. The laughter made me feel better about my situation. It didn’t matter that when I laughed (or even smirked) it hurt my jaw for a little bit. Or I laughed so hard it made me want to pee.

My head isn’t hurting as much, my muscles don’t feel as bad, but I’m still hacking up phlegm. I thank my slightly faster recovery due to the fact that I was laughing hysterically at silly cats that hate water.

It’s pretty, but not exactly everything I wished for, you know? Sometimes the image in my head doesn’t match the drawing on the picture.

Anywho, I realized that one thing that websites are supposed to do is increase the length of time one person is on it for a while. How is a personal website supposed to do that? I’m not going to offer games, contests, or giveaways. That’s not my style and I’ve heard from other webmasters that giveaways aren’t as helpful to increasing readership. It causes a spike then disappears again. Moot. That’s what it is.

Back to the question: how do I not jump the shark? I can’t do things like hype other people, mostly because I have no writer friends (*hint* let’s be friends! *hint*). I would have a link page if a) I would admit that most are Disney links and b) I give away where some of my writing inspiration comes from. Yes, I’ll add more photos, but the problem lies in the fact that I actually have to reduce the size of the photos and it’s a bitch I tell you.

I used to have a bookmark tab of other writers/journalists/mothers with computers that I really liked and mysteriously all of them disappeared. I will check my main computer (I’m situated in my backyard between two large citronella candles trying to keep every bug away from me) later on. Anywho, their pages were a combination of concise and yet I wandered their page for a good 15 minutes. Here? Not so much. I can go through it in five, but mostly because it’s actually very content thin.

I get it: I’ll work on this page. I guess it’s an ever evolving thing.

Personally, I’ve seen the images of writers, radio people, and podcasters and was taken aback. Maybe it’s true. Maybe a lot of these people are the bastard ugly children of successful television and film stars. Even the people on YouTube have good looks and usually only the good looking (or just insanely funny) YouTube videos become the most popular.

…

I’ve seen pictures of several writers on the back of their book (while wandering through Barnes & Noble, mind you) and thought: maybe the ugly ones write. I mean look at Stephen King: great writer, kinda ugly. Then again, one of my favorite writers, Augusten Burroughs, is good looking. Well, was… I’m not that into 40-somethings. I’ve wandered his website and saw pictures of him in the 90s with his drug sheik.

I’ve mused before about a year ago about being self conscious about my neck, but I don’t consider myself ugly. With my low self esteem, let me at least think that I’m good looking. I often think in defeatist mentality, but that doesn’t make me ugly either. Sometimes, I practice taking that stereotypical black and white author photo. I laugh thinking that a) I would end up writing a how to book or b) I wouldn’t write a book. Granted, I still need a new headshot-esque picture. I have to go call Eric and hire him as my photographer. Maybe I could pay him in Applebees and Hot Wings.

Does that mean I picked the wrong outlet? Granted maybe I’m looking at extremes. I mean look at Ryan Seacrest. If someone that weird looking can succeed, I guess anyone can.

So now, Feedburner should be taking care of my problems with RSS. Maybe I can finally get past that one subscriber and have…dare I say… two?

(Click on that Continue Reading for a picture of Sailor Moon and a dumb story)

I remember days when I ran my little rinky-dinky Tripod website. I didn’t even know that Tripod still existed. Doing a quick Google search, I found the not-so original address. I say, “not-so” because I did try to move the site and the “new” address doesn’t work anymore. I remember the original website was basically an HTML table, the links on the left and content on the right. Back then the biggest problem that I had was that I sucked at HTML. I also thought that a lot of unnecessary crap was cool. Animated Gifs, MIDI files, long loading photos graced each and every page.

Hello! Apparently my username still works...and I can access it

I just logged in and looked at the mess. Everything isn’t in folders, the files are just all out like dirty laundry. It looked like a ten year old made it. Then I looked at the year I placed on the website. 1998. Oh crap. It was when I was eleven. Wow, the internet is a funny thing isn’t it?

I’m thankful that I grew up and gained some taste. Granted, I used to have cool designs and stuff (well I thought I did) on Blogger. I turned making a crappy html website, to learning Photoshop and what colors matched each other. Luckily for me, I have a color-chart/thing that my old roommate Alex made for one of his classes. He didn’t need/want it afterwards and I decided to take it. It sits in my office and whenever I need to color match, whether it be HTML or scrapbooking, it’s behind me.

My how much the internet has changed after eleven years.