Looking back, I'm actively trying to decide if 2018 was a good year for me. Because I'm constantly setting goals (daily, weekly, summer, yearly, etc.), checking my goal progress is a great way to gauge to what degree I achieved what I set out to this year. Of course, I accomplished or experienced a lot of things that I didn't especially set out to do this year as well and a lot of those experiences were incredibly fulfilling. In short, here's here's a list of some things I did this year:
Got a job as a substitute teacher, tutor, and eventually a full-time high school math teacher. Working as a high school math teacher has been my dream for about 6 years now and I'm really glad I was finally able to get to this point. Also in tutoring, I learned everything there is to possibly know about taking the ACT and getting kids ready to take it.
Ran my first marathon since my December 2016 ACL reconstruction. This is a big deal to me. Besides the ACL repair about 2 years ago, they also took out a majority of my medial meniscus in my right knee, which means the cushioning and shock absorption in my right knee will be hindered for the rest of my life. On average, full ACL surgery recovery and strengthening can take about 24 months. I started training for a marathon around 18 months post-surgery. I was really happy to be able to run a marathon again and not have my knee prevent me from doing it. In fact, my left knee was the sore one at the end of the day, which is interesting.
Top of Utah Marathon (September 2018)
Became a cross country and girl's basketballcoach. Quite honestly, I hardly felt qualified to coach high school athletes in something I'd never coached or even experienced as an athlete before, but here I am. With no advice or training or assistant coaches, I just started showing up to cross country practice one day in the summer and pretended like I knew what I was doing. Boy, did I learn a LOT this year about these sports, about myself, and about my kids from my experience coaching. Coaching also took up an insane amount of my free time, for what it's worth, but I was happy to have the experience.
Cross country team in Moab, UT (September 2018)
Started this blog for real. It existed before this year, but 2018 is where I really got it on track to be a good medium for me to express myself in writing. Honestly, I don't post on it a ton--most weeks of teaching, I feel like I hardly have time to write save for a weekend or when we're on break from school. But the writing I have had time to do has been really fulfilling.
Travelled to New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Louisiana for the first time. New Orleans is an incredibly fascinating and unique city (to say the least), Gettysburg is a inspiring place, and I learned the people in New Jersey on average just aren't very attractive. But seeing Streetlight Manifesto play in their hometown of Toms River, NJ in front of a huge crowd was a ton of fun. I also managed to find my way to an Aquabats concert in LA, Arches National Park in southern Utah, the Pac-12 Championship in San Francisco, and the Holiday Bowl in San Diego to watch the Utes play.
As you can see, I was very excited to see the Liberty Bell in person (May 2018)
Received my diploma and walked at graduation. It's nice for it to finally be official and to finally have the diploma in my hands--I got a Bachelor's degree in mathematics with a minor in physics. It's pretty official now, or whatever, as you can see from my sister's snapchat below.
Diploma day (May 2018)
Bought my first car, outright and on my own. It's a crappy 1997 Jeep Grand Cherokee, but it runs. I can't remember exactly how the conversation went, but my sister and I decided to name it "The Burgermobile" despite it not even somewhat resembling a sandwich. I also moved out of my parents house for the first time since 2015, for what it's worth, since I guess that's what adults do these days.
A few things I didn't set out to do but ended up happening: I got really good at Rocket League, watched a lot of Trailer Park Boys, played a lot of Pokemon Go (including finally finishing off my original 150 Pokedex), went to the arcade with friends like 20 times, practiced skateboarding and learned to ollie consistently while riding on pavement, and participated in two 24-hour gaming parties. One of them was a charity event organized by my cousin and we managed to raise a decent amount of money to donate to some sort of mental health organization I can't remember (I was there for the video games, okay???).
Went on an awesome 9-day Disney World/Universal Studios trip in Florida with my siblings and shot a fun travel video.
The fam in front of the Tree of Life inside Animal Kingdom (March 2018)
Went Skydiving! It took some trickery to get all my friends there at the same time and I had to plan the trip way out to Tooele for us all since nobody else would do it, but it was worth it. And the actual experience of jumping out of a plane itself? It was nuts--and really hard to put into words. Maybe I'll write about it sometime.
Skydiving with the crew (August 2018)
Kept up yearly traditions with my friends including St. Patrick's Day, Tanksgiving, Summer goals, the dart board game, and a fantasy football banquet. In thinking about it, my friends and I actually have quite a few yearly traditions and we really did do a good job keeping them up this year. In addition, I also had a great birthday involving just a game of baseball with my friends and family--which became one of my favorite birthday memories to date.
Birthday Baseball game with family and friends. I didn't even strike out! (September 2018)
Started a mediocre podcast with my best friend Dakota. I think a handful of people actually enjoyed listening to it, but more than anything, we had a ton of fun making it. We really love talking about ourselves and answering questions, as it turns out.
All those things considered, I think I'd call 2018 eventful if not successful. Overall I'd give it a 4/5 stars
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But now looking forward instead, I think it's time to start thinking of what kinds of things I expect to accomplish in 2019. Here's my brainstorming list, though I'm sure the year won't go exactly as I planned:
I've got a life goal to teach abroad sometime. At this young age and early in my career, now would be a great time to start looking into that. If nothing else, I expect to travel out of the country for the first time this upcoming year.
Travel to a new state. 31 down, 19 to go!
I need to read more books. I honestly love reading, but rarely feel like I have the time.
Cut back on all social media and go outside more. Consider getting rid of my smartphone altogether.
Practice/learn guitar.
Write/start writing a book.
Shift weight training and distance running training to instead focus on triathlon training.
Run across the state of Utah. By my estimate, this should take about 60 days to complete.
There's so many things I want to do and a year is so little time to do it. There's certainly more I'd like to accomplish in a year, but what with sleeping 8 hours a day and working 40+ hours a week and all the other hobbies I pursue, these 8 things are a pretty reasonable set of self improvements to focus on. Like, reading a book a month is so easy. But reading a book a month when you're training for a marathon, working overtime, keeping up a writing blog, and coaching girls basketball for 2 hours a day while learning the guitar and balancing a dating life plus trying to find time for yourself to relax? That's the real reason why I'm pretty content with the progress I made in 2018. I feel like I worked incredibly hard consistently every single month of the year and I was always pursuing some sort of improvement every day. It wasn't perfect, but if I keep improving like I did in 2018, I think I'll continue to be happy.
I'll try to keep the suggestions obscure, illustrative, and brief. If you're looking for good, new music, you might like getting into some of these bands; others on the list might be total a dead-ends. But here's some songs by local and/or lesser known artists that I'll totally vouch for:
1. The Heirs - "What You Want" (2016, Electro-pop)
In 2016, my brother and I drove up to Boise, Idaho in his janky car just to complete our summer goal to go to Warped Tour (since we missed the Salt Lake City stop of the tour). While we were in line to get into the show, a poster for The Heirs caught my eye and I kinda liked the way it looked. "You know what? If there's literally no other band I want to see when they're on the stage, maybe I'll stop by." As you might have guessed, there was no other good bands playing during that random afternoon slot, so we stopped by to see them.
In short, they were not that good. They came across as one of those local bands who was just grateful to be given a shot to play at Warped Tour--which is probably because they were a local band who was just grateful to be given a shot to play at Warped Tour. After standing through a mostly-dull lineup, right at the end of their set The Heirs floored me with this electro-pop anthem. I won't speak too much to describing the sound of the song; I'll let you experience it yourself. But you can imagine how good this might have sounded in context. Not to mention, "What You Want" still only has 7,000 views on YouTube (half of them are probably me) and this song isn't even playable on Spotify. Talk about a hipster song to add to your repertoire.
2. Tarot Death Card - "Tell Me When It Hurts" (2017, Indietronica Trip Pop)
I actually have no idea how I found this song. But the story, I suppose, begins with the girl I had a crush on back in 7th grade named Chloe. She was a tall, gorgeous, red-headed 8th grader on the volleyball team and I was a weird band kid who sometimes wore a cape to school, sold gum balls to kids at lunch for a nickel, and filmed goofy videos with friends. Needless to say, it didn't work out. But! My then-crush went on to start Tarot Death Card--and now they've got about half a dozen songs on Spotify. I don't know if they're still progressing as a band or not, but I still think they're worth talking about just because of this song.
I'll admit, their trip pop style isn't really the kind of stuff I normally listen to, and when I was checking them out, I wasn't sure I really liked them--until I heard "Tell Me When It Hurts." Chloe's vocals finally pop to the front of the track (where they probably belong) and her vocal/lyric performance carries the song as a whole. Something about the slow, melodic vocals draws me in like a siren song--the vocal track on "Tell Me When It Hurts" is completely captivating and entrancing. It's got less than a thousand plays on Spotify, but I might single-handedly get it to that mark someday with how often it pops up on random on my playlists.
3. Ozma - "Restart" (2003, Indie Pop/Alt Rock)
Something about this song I absolutely adore. Startlingly, it starts by describing a fairly depressing situation of a man stuck in a cubicle all day who has an intrusive thought of throwing himself off the roof one day during work, but he decides the better of it. He then moves on from it and muses over life and love in a relatable but confounding manner. But the real reason I love this song so much is absolutely the melody. I can't really describe how, but it speaks to my soul. I love every bit of sound Ozma recorded on this track, with a particular soft spot for the organ part, background guitar, and chorus vocals. These guys really should have gotten so much bigger than they ever did.
4. Tally Hall Feat. Casey Shea - "Club Can't Handle Me (cover)" (2011, Indie Pop/Alt Rock)
Let's be real, Tally Hall had no business covering this song--which is what makes it so good. They're a tiny band I wish still existed who (optimistically speaking) made a living off recording goofy songs and filming a goofy internet show. On the other hand, Flo Rida was one of the hottest "artists" of my high school career (2008-2010) and the original "Club Can't Handle Me" was a chart-topping, million-dollar banger back in 2010. But, the original song is a steaming pile of shit, whereas Tally Hall's ironic cover featuring random tour buddy Casey Shea is every bit of fun the original song, by nature, could not have been. In the breakdown, they even talk about showing the recording to Flo Rida himself (I imagine this was fabricated, but who knows) and he totally hated their new cover. I suggest giving it a whirl, obviously.
5. Five Iron Frenzy - "Wizard Needs Food, Badly" (2003, Ska)
For any ska band that isn't The Aquabats, Streetlight Manifesto, Reel Big Fish, or Suburban Legends, there's a decent chance I discovered them by some sort of random autoplay feature online (YouTube, Spotify, Pandora, etc). Because I listen to a decent amount of music online, if that wasn't obvious. Now I don't recall which autoplay introduced me to this strangely hit and miss Christian ska band, Five Iron Frenzy, but I'm glad it did.
At that, "Wizard Needs Food, Badly" is one of their momentous hits. On more than one occasion I've had this tune stuck in my head all day and was disappointed to find it isn't even on Spotify. But besides the Gauntlet gimmick the song is based on and the muted horns that interestingly round out a great overall melody, the reason this song works, in my mind, is because of the lyrical theme. The song is basically about having girlfriend troubles on account of being a big nerd; he likes video games, TV, baseball, and motorcycles--and she's not having ant part of it ("You say 'tomato,' I say 'video games'"). It's hard to say who's at fault here since he seems to love his hobbies too much and she just hates everything he does, but I love the concept. I imagine that relationship didn't last too much longer, but I'm glad this song made it out alive. Oh, and if you like their ska sound, I highly recommend their cover of It's Not Unusual or one of their two originals Far, Far Away (which is very Christian) or Oh, Canada (which is very Canadian). As I said, they're really hit and miss. You're probably not gonna find a solid album by these guys, but they definitely hit gold with their sound here and there.
6. Limbeck - "Honk+Wave" (2003, Alt Rock)
Okay, I know nothing about this band. But I do know that whenever I listen to "Honk+Wave" it puts me in an introspective, reflective mood despite the generally upbeat sound. The song is about a guy, probably from California (you can tell he's not from Utah because he calls I-15 'the 15'), who gets his heart broken by a girl from Utah. The lyrics are essentially that guy thinking out loud, trying to figure out what he wants out of his old breakup--he's not ready to totally burn the bridge because they were so close and they were in love once. He doesn't necessarily want anything from her now, but it's been 4 years and he still isn't totally over her. His thought? "Hey, it'd be nice if ever we passed each other on I-15 that we could at least honk and wave at each other." I've thought about this myself in a different way--I'm not on excellent terms with all my ex's, but every single one of them I loved in some way in the past. At minimum, I'd hope if I saw them one day at the grocery store, we'd at least stop and talk to catch up and have it not be awkward, rather than pretend we didn't see each other (which I do to 80% of the people I went to high school with). Man, this song can get you thinking.
7. The Pietasters - "Can I Change My Mind" (1995, Ska)
For my last song, I was having a tough time deciding between "Can I Change My Mind" and another Pietasters hit, Out All Night, which is much more popular. In fact, despite The Pietasters being an incredibly underrated ska band, "Out All Night" has nearly 1.7 million plays on Spotify (about 7 times more than their next most played song), probably because it was a standout from the 2006 NCAA Football PS2 soundtrack. Honestly, "Can I Change My Mind" isn't the better song of the two, but I still enjoy it immensely and for an entirely different reasons than why I like "Out All Night."
Although "Can I Change My Mind" is great if you're looking for a song that you can identify with after leaving a girl who didn't even seem to care you were leaving (who hasn't done that, right?), the lyrics aren't what I find most appealing about this song (unlike most of the other songs on this list). Instead, I find the instrumentation to be more compelling than anything. I really love the beautiful organ intro, the chill/optimistic reggae backbeat, the short yet infectiously perfect piano riff, the horn solos... It might not be your jam if you have something against reggae or ska, but it definitely vibes with me.
