meme torture

For some stupid reason I thought I'd update my woefully dated '100 Things' list. Without really remembering how painful, mortifying and protracted that process was in the first place. Idiot.

But I'm 42 things into it already, after only a week, which is a rate far in excess of the first one's 14 month time period. Although I'm aware that I've not completed it yet so it may well go for much longer. Don't count chickens etc. Aside: that aphorism misses the fact that chickens are a bugger to count after they've hatched too. Compared to eggs - which tend not to run around a lot. Just sayin'.

It's easy to list a bunch of things about yourself really (grew from a fertilized ovum, was moved by the movie Gloomy Sunday, is not clinically mad, likes reading, has own elbows, etc) but actually saying things that are meaningful is a little more complex. There are things that have happened in my life that most people see as hugely important (graduation, marriage, court appearances, etc) but which have little or no significance to me.

On the other hand there are the banal and largely mundane experiences that I find have lingered with me for years longer than they ought to have. Things that didn't seem important at the time and probably wouldn't interest anyone else but stick in my memory. Meeting Lisa for the first time on the inter-school biology trip to Kaikoura. Sitting with Mark in the botanic gardens one fine autumn afternoon, mildly tripping on acid and just soaking in the day. Seeing Head Like A Hole play the ballroom at Orientation in 1992. The lift I got from the crazy Frenchmen when hitchhiking down the North Island one summer. Reading my first blog (Leto from Petone - sadly not blogging anymore).

And then there are the events that fit the 'important event' category and I knew it at the time. Usually involving people: Rupert, David & I doing that road trip around the South Island. Winning my first karate tournament. Meeting Sas for the first time. My thirtieth birthday party. The first time I kissed Mary. Skydiving. The first time I hand-fed a shark. The first time a shark fed on my hand...

Not sure what I'm trying to say here actually. I seem to have rambled away from my starting point quite a bit. Maybe I'm just struggling to find significance in my life that I feel comfortable sharing with others, and struggling to find significant the things that I do share...

Possibly I should stop wasting this blather on a blog post and go apply it to the 100 things.