Oh hey. I’ve been tremendously busy and important. Okay fine – busy but not important. I’ve been absent for like, two months. You could’ve let me had that one. Whatever. Let’s move on.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve hit the point of “BLOGGING IS DEAD TO ME” at least six or seven times. Mostly because I got so into doing things that somehow carving time out in my day to write about the things being done felt so efforty that it just made me want to hide under the bed with a jar of peanut butter and a spoon…spoon optional.

I’ve hit the point of needing to block out time in my calendar reminding me to do things like brush my teeth, or eat an apple, or twirl around in circles while singing an a capella version of ‘Stronger.’ Everything’s so awesome lately that I can barely talk about it without sounding like a sorority sister who showed up for the reunion and realized that everyone else gained weight but her. That is how excited I am about the world.

But hey – I may (read: will probably) fall flat on my face again at some point again in the future and wouldn’t I feel silly not having a blog to drunkenly ramble to after being kicked in the kidney by life. So I’m not leaving yet. But I am phoning it in. Thus? I give you a very superficial recap of everything you need to know about the past little while:

I rediscovered drinking: now with more bourbon. Wine has become a cruel and expensive habit wherein I either drink entire bottles by myself in one go, or I let it go bad on the counter and get scolded for being wasteful. The solution? Bourbon, baby. Which I drink on the rocks in these sassy glasses I bought last month. It’s all classy and gentleman-like if you overlook my use of the word ‘sassy’ to describe the habit.

I made a Hair Bucket List. Despite my hearty Acadian roots giving me thick and unmanageable hair so that I could presumably survive another theoretical deportation, my hair follicles are getting lazy to the point of untimely deaths. Thus, the Hair Bucket List was born: “rock a side pony.” End of list.

I flirted with overexposure again. As if #benspotting weren’t enough, I spent a week assaulting Atlantic Canadians across all media. I managed to pull off ‘enthusiastic’ at 6:20am in a radio studio, I avoided swearing while wearing a CBC mic for 90 minutes, and I survived a middle-of-the-street photo shoot. And then I slept until the end of time.

I became dangerously obsessed with the show Happy Endings. It started with an accidental viewing after Modern Family and blossomed into a full-fledged marathon of the first season, a weekend of seeing how many abbrevs I could work into daily conversation, and a complicated spreadsheet ranking the order in which I would marry each of the main characters: Brad, Jane, Dave, Penny, Max, Alex. Duh.

I threw a lot of parties and wore a lot of costumes. And now that I’m starting to feel a little confident in my ability to do my job, I can actually enjoy them. Oh what’s that? You didn’t realize that my job is to hang out with all my friends, drink cocktails, eat cheesecake, dress up like Clue characters and 90s clubbers, and pose for photos? Sorry. That’s some harsh truth to take in all at once. You should be Yelping. That is all.

I realized that art galleries are the best places to ride out a hangover. I had the best intentions to behave myself on my most recent San Fransisco trip and in all honesty, I did pretty well aside from two horrible, horrible nights. The first, I underestimated a craft cocktail bar’s ability to make strong Old Fashioneds. The second, well, it was just a mess. Luckily, the hotel was right next door to the Museum of Modern Art – a quiet, safe space where it’s socially appropriate to stare vacantly at the wall for as long as you please. Yeah girl.

I publicly admitted that my three biggest fears are tsunamis, botulism, and whales. With honourable mentions to math, lactose intolerance, and high school reunions.

And with that, we’re all caught up. I hope you feel as good as I do about all this.

And now for a super timely post on New Year’s Resolutions! New Years Resolutions? New Years’ Resolutions’es? Those things you commit to in a drunken haze when you assume you can fix your entire life with a couple promises made in between bites of cheese ball!

The bottom line is that I don’t make ‘em.

Blog post, over.

Okay fine. While I don’t make grandiose life decisions under the influence of champagne (mostly because they’d probably come out something like, “Be Beyoncé”), I do try to start the new year off on the best note possible. This isn’t so much tied to the changing over of the year as it’s about bouncing back from two holiday weeks of pastry-eating and never quite sobering up enough to drive.

When you start to worry more about whether or not there’s champagne in the fridge for morning mimosas rather than whether or not there’s orange juice for breakfast, it’s time to pull yourself together a little bit.

I kicked off 2012 with two main things that I wanted to work on. Between the two, I hypothesized (remind me to tell you about the multiple-year span that I used to pronounce hypothesis as ‘hype-o-thesis.’ Thanks for nothing, French Immersion.) that the spin-off effects would be equal to making about ten other resolutions. So basically you could say that I’ve already made good on a third resolution for ULTIMATE EFFICIENCY.

My first plan for the new year was to cook more of my own meals instead of just handing over three times my annual salary to restaurants, cafés, and bars. Aside from the pure financial benefit that would also help Scrooge McNewf off my ass, this would help me be healthier, get closer to what I think my body type is actually supposed to be (there’s an underwear model under here somewhere…), and most of all, secure time every single day to relax.

That’s right. I find cooking relaxing. Being completely scattered while dirtying every dish, pot and pan in the kitchen has become like yoga to me. If I get distracted with a new Emma Stone interview on YouTube, shit burns. If I decide to start going through work emails on my phone instead of paying attention to a recipe, I don’t get to eat supper. Cooking gives me the single-minded focus that I only get on airplanes nowadays. Except it’s even better…because I get to eat.

Now, because I’m a nice, upstanding Millennial, I need outside reinforcement to keep motivated with this. So, I’m going to keep updating this full list of new recipes I’ve made in 2012. Aside from this post, you’ll never hear of it again. But, should you feel so inclined, click over from time to time and see if there’s anything you like – I’ll get a button added to the blog at some point, for you. Now I feel like I have some accountability and you can be a creepy creeper staring in through my kitchen window without actually having to do so. Win/win.

My second goal was to spend more time working from home instead of saying I work from home when I really spend the vast majority of time working from restaurants, cafés, and bars. Are you picking up on the theme for my year? Basically you could combine all of my 2012 goals into just one: be thin and rich. Which coincidentally is not that far from what I would have suggested after a few glasses of champagne so maybe my argument against NYRs is moot.

(Moot is a funny word.)

Spending four of the five weekdays working from my home office as the Gods of Internet Employees intended has meant many wonderful things like more sleep, more time to cook, less money wasted on food, and fewer useless calories consumed in between mealtimes (“I’ll just call this lunch a warm-up for actual lunch.”). But more importantly, it has also meant uncovering the biggest scandal to rock this household since I realized the newf tucks his dress shirts into his underpants:

He pre-programmed the heat to cut out every two hours in an attempt to counteract my incessant need to turn it up to temperatures that put global warming to shame.

That sly sonofabitch (okay, that’s not true. My mother-in-law is quite lovely) has been keeping me cold all winter, taking advantage of my short attention span, my struggle to understand how to work our heating command center thingy, and my inability to turn daily observations into a hype-o-thesis regarding this blatant abuse of power over the heating system. And so we enter, END GAME.

Who’s coming to my Chilean-themed house party? The dress code is skivvies.

[Photo credit: _escalade328s_]

Before we even get started here, I just need a minute to mention how hard it is to write about your first trip to New York City without filling the entire post with clichés, song titles, and Alicia Keys. I’ve tried to get this finished about seventeen times, an effort that always ended with me forcibly removing myself from the keyboard after starting yet another paragraph with, “so the next thing we did in the Big Apple also known as the concrete jungle where dreams are MAAAAADE of there’s nothing you CAAAAAAN’T do.”

As for the actual New York trip, it was refreshing, it was exciting, and – oh, fuck it – you want to know what the trip was really like? Picture spending five days living in the creepiest corner of the celebrity fantasies department of my brain and you’ll start to understand just how much of a vacation boner this was. And right about now, my darling travel companion and pop culture soulmate Shannon is regretting sharing a bed and hotel room throughout all of this.

But it’s true. Between the five full days of the trip, I was within grabbing distance of Anderson Cooper for the better part of two hours, I got to watch Darren Criss sing about ‘brotherhood’ for an entire evening (I can read in between the lines, Blaine. *wink*), and I didn’t-realize-how-much-he-had-to-drink screamed along with Kelly Clarkson in concert at the Radio City Music Hall.

For serious: we were having such a rowdy good time that at one point, three cameras across the aisle were filming us instead of Kelly. We haven’t turned up on YouTube. Yet. I even searched “When Gays Get Drunk In Public” and while I was relieved to see that I didn’t turn up, I’m a little horrified for my people.

Without even getting into all the juicy details about spinning in circles in Times Square while singing “WE FOUND LOOOVE IN A HOOOPELESS PLACE! *doo-doo-doo, do-do-do, doo-doo-doo, do-do-do*” – because sometimes that’s just what you need to do after two bottles of wine and a Kelly concert – or eating our way through a mac ‘n cheese and mac ‘n cheese alone restaurant, it’s a wonder I ever came back. But best of all, we didn’t break any of my Strict Guidelines for Vacation Success.

1) Don’t get arrested: Sure – I had ample opportunity and motive to merit the close attention of the law due to the terrible, wonderful thoughts I had while under the same roof as Darren and Anderson but I managed to resist throwing my panties at their faces thereby ensuring I live free to creep on them another day. Besides, when you’re as close to Anderson as we were, suddenly slapping him in the face with your drawers doesn’t have the same effect as if they gently land on stage during a Bon Jovi concert. I’m pretty sure the Coops would have just been pissed.

2) Don’t get injured: When we woke up one morning to see the city covered in an inch or two of snow, we brave, winter-ready Canadians thought almost nothing of it. Until of course we realized that despite being the most vibrant city in the world, New York thinks it’s acceptable to clear sidewalks of snow and ice with BROOMS. BROOMS, people! More than once, I feared breaking an arm outside of Forever 21, partly because there’s a Forever 21 in every single building in Manhattan, but mostly because I refused to wear sensible footwear after buying completely non-sensible but very fashionable Cole Haans. #Priorities

3) Don’t get constipated: Of the three Strict Guidelines, we definitely flirted with this one the most. But you caught the whole mac ‘n cheese restaurant dealie, right? What we were to do?! You don’t go to a place that serves every kind of mac ‘n cheese ever imagined and just order a small skillet of ‘original.’ You hit that place with a clear schedule, a fake name, and a large pair of sunglasses and go to freaking Cheese Town on that B. And yes, Cheese Town happens to be the next-door neighbour of Constipation Junction. You just have to be okay with the risk. This sort of cheesy carb consumption isn’t for the weak.

Of course, there were a couple things that left a little to be desired. Most notable: my Where’s Waldo approach to reading a map, our synced hunger schedules that often left us cranky and useless at the exact same time – usually with nothing but Burger Kings within sight, and the fact that getting to our quite lovely hotel meant walking past a parole office and three voyeur adult video  stores every single night.

But clearly nothing that having Rihanna stuck in your head for a straight week couldn’t fix!

*doo-doo-doo, do-do-do, doo-doo-doo, do-do-do*

So…life called my bluff. A few months ago, we upgraded our home television and internet service. One thing led to another, and all of a sudden I was on billboards, radio stations, television channels, telcom stores, and web banners strewn about the Atlantic provinces.

Now, I’d fill in some of the details for you, but you have to understand that this is sort of how things go over here. The newf gets home from work, I tell him some random occurrence while watching Glee DVDs in my sweatpants, and all of a sudden the entire city is going about their daily business under the watchful eye of well…building-sized limited editions of my face.

It doesn’t make any sense, and it’s not going to make any sense, so I’m going to have to just ask that y’all get on board so we can move on.

Anyhow, in the midst of all this happening, I was joking with some fellow Halifax bloggers about how we should make a hashtag so that the entire Atlantic Canadian population could get in on the excitement of gazing upon my beauty. We’d call it #benspotting.

Ha. Ha. Ha. Yes – we’re obnoxious but at least we keep ourselves entertained.

And then it actually started to happen.

And then it sustained for longer than anyone thought possible.

And then more people wanted to use my face for things.

And then after multiple rounds in film studios, recording studios, photo shoots, and interviews, I brought you guys up to speed on the Kardashianesque mania that my life has become. Well, it’s Kardashian once you take away all the fame, wealth, power, and global embarrassment.

So, if all of Atlantic Canada has to put up with me invading their senses, so do you and there’s pretty much no way I can take you through all of this without it sounding really braggy and awful. But whatever. We’ll get through it like a bandaid…slowly but surely, one hair at a time. Or maybe that’s just how I rip off bandaids.

• First, and most prominently, do you remember that TV and internet upgrade I mentioned? Yeah. I’m all over that now. I basically own Bell. Again, if ‘own’ were to have nothing to do with riches, power, or control. So don’t be that guy who comes to me for customer service. I just wanted to download tween pop songs faster. And I do that on repeat-peat-peat-peat-peat.

• Second, and I am particularly happy with how this one turned out, I haven’t embarrassed my alma mater to the point of them denying any connection to me! Huzzah! In fact, they so very kindly brought me in for an interview, video profile, and lovely article about my ahem non-traditional career path. Check it out, y’all.

• Third, I somehow landed myself in very lovely company for a magazine feature on local bloggers. And this one? It’s more a testament to you guys than it is to me. Without you, I wouldn’t have a blog, I wouldn’t have found my voice, I wouldn’t have gone to Africa, I wouldn’t have ended up on billboards, and I wouldn’t have my style described as, “mini-memoirs: incidents in his life shaken vigorously into a cocktail of comical description and sassy sarcasm.”

Actually, now that I write it all out, I’m slowly realizing that this post isn’t obnoxious and braggy about me. It’s more accurately an obnoxious and braggy post about YOU, your unbelievable support of the blog that more than one person said would keep me unemployed, and the energy you share that keeps me thinking I can keep blazing my own trail year after year. Sure, I love the things I get to do, but so much of it comes down to wanting to make you (yes, YOU) proud. I mean that.

So thank you. Truly. But god – quit being so obnoxious about it okay? There’s something to be said about keeping some humility. Some people are just so arrogant…

The other day while the newf was out educating the leaders of tomorrow, I counted how many pairs of underwear he had. And before you go asking why one might feel the need to do such a thing, you need to understand that it’s winter up here in Canada and that means getting creative about filling all the time you spend indoors hating the world. Also, it’s been a full year since I started working from home without coworkers – I’ll be the first to admit that I’m getting weird.

Regardless of my motives, you’ll be glad I did because the results were STAGGERING. But before we get into the details that I’m sure are going to get me involved in some sort of family meeting about boundaries, it’s important that you know a couple of things:

- The newf, despite how he tends to dance in our kitchen, is not an erotic dancer that might need a full wardrobe of varied and often themed undergarments.

- There are no fetishes in our home to speak of that might give rise to a uncharacteristically large quantity of manties spread taking up three drawers.

- We’re gay so take any assumptions of $10 five-packs of Hanes and toss em out the window. I saw more labels in that dresser than there were in The September Issue.

Y’all ain’t ready…

It may not look like much…but that’s because you didn’t get to experience the happy task of trying to force those two drawers back into the dresser as the force of 100 pairs of underwear work against you.

That’s right – 100!! Enough to open up one’s own used underwear shop (I didn’t say it was a great idea)! Or outfit one third of the Spartans for their sexy wartime panty games! And if being able to dress a sizeable army of six-packed warriors with five minutes notice wasn’t shocking enough for you, let’s talk economics. Or finance. Or maybe just simple math…once numbers get involved, I pretty much just close my eyes and wait for it all to pass:

One pair of Ginch Gonch: $20-30

One pair of Dolce & Gabbana: $30-35

One pair of Calvin Klein: $15-20

One pair of random granny panty boxers often worn with fleecy sweatpants pulled up to his nipples because it, “feels like someone’s hugging my butt”: $8-12

Average cost per pair as arbitrarily chosen by me: $22.50

Approximate household holdings in Underwear Capital: $2,250

With that amount of money, we could pay an underwear model to come stand around the house in his skivvies for our next dinner party. And we wouldn’t even have to settle for a flat-stomach – we could afford the whole six, eight, or however many abs people are supposed to have these days.

Just in case anyone cares, I blame Ryan Reynold’s eight-foot torso for the arms race happening between Ideal Abdominals and Shaving Razors. I, too, could have fourteen abs if only I had the torso real estate. And if I stopped eating and drinking until the end of time. And if I occasionally made even the slightest effort to use even just a single muscle.

In other news, I don’t really have any way to end this post besides perhaps mentioning that Yelp sent me a onesie pajama set for Christmas and I’ve been wearing it under all my clothes pretty much nonstop.

So, compared to the newf’s 100 pairs of underwear, am I the 1%, the 99%, or just the ‘needs to do laundry more often’ %?

[Actual photo of a teenaged me working. My face suggests it was taken during science or art week.]

It has come to my attention (because some people can’t just let things go), that I may have overlooked one very obvious omission from my previous list of social encounters that make me uncomfortable: face-to-face interactions with children, babies, or anyone too far below the legal drinking age. While at first I attempted to counter this accusation, my internal reaction to news that a new-mom friend was coming over said more than I ever could:

“Wait. Is she bringing that baby?! YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL ABOUT BABIES. I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’D RUIN MY LIFE LIKE THIS.”

Now, dramatics aside–actually, no…no ‘dramatics aside.’ Without the dramatics, I wouldn’t have a blog. In fact, I say we need more dramatics up in this B which is why I proudly stand by my knee-jerk reaction to the threatening possibility of baby time Or, if nothing else, I stand by my reaction because I know there are far too many similar cases to really deny at this point.

Last week my parents sprung two admittedly adorable and polite distant cousins on me at a Christmas open house (we’ll have to get into my mother’s particular blend of crazy that led to planning and hosting an open house with 36-hours notice some other time). Within three seconds of walking in the door, they were on top of me, kicking off a night of awkwardly running away lest my true colours show:

Cute kids: “Hi. Are you Stephen or Benjamin? Is that you in this picture? Do you live here?”

Internal Monologue: “EW. GET AWAY FROM ME, YOU LITTLE FREAK!”

Cute kids: “You can hang up your coat in this closet. And you should put your shoes here on this mat.”

Internal Monologue: “YOU’RE NOT MY MOM! YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!”

Eventually I gave them the slip by distracting them with the newf’s iPhone. That’s babysitting 4G-style, y’all.

Even this week the lovely Ally was telling me about her two-year-old who has learned how to drop beats on his T-Pain autotune microphone (watch your volume) and expects daily Michael Jackson dance parties. I mean, if there was ever a kid I could hang with, it would be this one. He has imaginary conference calls with Lady Gaga for god’s sake! But no…

This morning she reminded me of the epic deny I tossed her way when she asked if she could bring the little nugget to a barbecue at my place. Without being able to remember my exact words, I feared the worst. I imagined something like, “Sure, but the likelihood of me giving you a false address will increase dramatically,” or, “Sure, but I’ve never grilled toddler before.”

While neither was quite on the mark, you can be the judge of whether the real deal (copy-and-pasted from the original message) is better or worse:

Toddlers welcome although they cannot be my responsibility also, Theo may try to take him down if he runs.

Yup. I agreed but also announced that I may sick my dog on him.

Children are the future or whatever…

Sweeping Statement #1: There are very few social situations that I cannot rock. Moreover (what a fucking terrible word…we should just replace it with ‘WHY YES. AS A MATTER OF FACT, I HAVE TAKEN A INTRODUCTORY-LEVEL ENGLISH COURSE’), the ones that cause me any level of anxiety are typically ones in which I know I will never find myself. Like orgies*. Or murder plots**. Or cover-ups after someone accidentally dies during an orgy and you’re the only one who wants to go to the cops about it***. Or basically anything that has to do with anonymous sex or death.

Sweeping Statement #2: Despite my mastery of social circumstances save murder and sex parties, it has recently come to light that weddings are shockingly not among my social repertoire. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that I am one of the worst wedding guests of all time, made worse considering that people (myself included) generally don’t see this coming until the big day when suddenly I’m all up in your family’s business making everyone uncomfortable. My role as Ill-Equipped Conversationalist should be right up there with Depressed Single Sister and College Roommate Without A Filter.

I really don’t know what it is about weddings that makes me turn into a backwoods hermit whose only social experience played out on Geocities discussion boards, but it was a major problem during some New Year’s Eve nuptials just last week. The only–and I do mean *only*–phrase I could muster up for the bride was some variation on how gorgeous she looked. Nice the first few times, weird when I literally cannot find other words. Likewise, the only offering I had for the groom was, “I hope you’re actually getting to enjoy your day! Weddings be crazy, yo!”

Guys? I do not know how weddings be. I’ve only been to about four in my entire life.

I also have no business ending declarations with, “yo!”

My first foray into the world of weddings was as an infant buckled into whatever child seat contraption has since been deemed devastatingly unsafe for use among babies. My parents tucked me underneath a banquet table to sleep while they partied. When pressed, their excuse is a simple, “Hey – that’s just what people did in the eighties.” And while that excuse might work for cocaine and big hair, I remain unconvinced of its legitimacy in the case of my clearly traumatic upbringing. As for the wedding? It was about as good as one can be before you’re old enough to get inappropriately drunk and grind up on the bride’s great aunt Doris.

At age five, I was one of the ring-bearers at my uncle’s wedding. My fat cheeks weighed about as much as my entire body does now and I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. What I did know was that it would be the start of my own lifelong romance with tuxedo vests, bowties, and having people watch me walk. I can’t be 100% sure, but I like to believe I invented the Tyra Banks that day. I worked that shit out, y’all.

With such a strong showing as a toddler (are five-year-olds still toddlers or just smaller, stickier children?), I honestly never saw my New Year’s Eve disaster coming. But people…what are you supposed to talk about at weddings?! I mean, as nice as a ceremony is–and this one was truely carved out of my very champagne-filled dreams–I just don’t have enough to say about it to last through the night!

Without a script, or talking points, or even the faintest reference point for social cues in these circumstances, and much to the dismay of anyone who got stuck talking to me, I just spent the night awkwardly asking Big Life Questions. For hours, I rotated through these three sentences, sometimes using them more than once on the same horrified people:

- “So…when are you two tying the knot?” (often said to married people.)

- “So…are kids in the plans?” (honestly, guys. I was awful.)

- “Well, I guess that’s marriage…amirite?” (the. worst.)

Two hours into the reception I looked desperately at the newf in a blind panic, wishing that he’d forcibly remove me from the building or at least punch me hard enough to black out for the rest of it. Of course, he was hammered and found it hilarious to watch me leave a trail of uncomfortable people in my wake.

Which brings us right to my strategy for the next time. At least then I’ll have the drunk excuse.

*Do you just start touching people? How do you politely say that you have enough going on around you so kindly just watch for the time-being until space clears up? What if you show up and everyone’s ugly…can you just leave?

**Even after working in advertising for almost three years, the thought of having to organize and delegate among a crowd of people who clearly have no qualms about ending lives is simply not something I’m comfortable with.

***Chick please…I’m Canadian. We don’t go to prison. We apologize and politely rat out our sexual acquaintances.

[Photo credit: Skona]

I have my serious hat on today, kids. Okay fine – it’s not that serious. It’s more like a grey tweed on the outside with a bright blue cartoon whale pattern liner. You know, business time meets ‘I’m five-years-old’ which is generally what I want for my entire wardrobe. But, seeing as how this now awesome-sounding hat is entirely theoretical for the sake of setting the tone for my final post of 2011, maybe I should stop talking about it and get down to actual business.

[Hey hatmakers: I'm ready to partner on my line of No Ordinary Hats whenever you are. I'll take my share of the business in unlimited hats* and bragging rights. Call me.]

This was a ridiculous year. As in, so ridiculous that I’m almost sick of talking about it. That’s not to say that the past twelve months haven’t been everything I’ve ever wanted and more, but 2011 offered only tastes of what I’m looking for – not the real deal. I’m just so afraid that I’ll spend too much time basking in temporary excitement at the expense of the momentum and focus I need to keep pushing toward my long-term goals.

Whatever those are…

See, I think I actually learned too much about myself all at once in 2011 – a couple great things but many more ugly truths and limitations that I’ve been trying to turn into wisdom. At first, it was great. I was able to adapt and adjust and plan for my own shortcomings with a clarity I’d never had before. But now? Well, I see the path to failure a little too clearly and get stuck making knee-jerk reactions and snap judgements at the first sign of that slippery slope.

Hi there, pressure. I figured you’d turn up eventually.

There you have it: Ben’s not satisfied again and no one’s surprised. I can almost hear my parents and the newf commiserating over Irish coffees from here. But, on a much more positive note and despite the manic obsession for bigger and better, I’m more excited, inspired and hopeful than I’ve been since my university days. 2011 was the happiest and most fun-filled year I’ve had in my twenties and you best believe I’ll do whatever it takes to keep moving in that direction.

So rather than bore you with the things you already know happened last year or dance around the secrets I have planned for the new year, I’m going to close out this bitch with a collection of the lessons learned that had me feeling like a brand new me at age 26. I tried to credit people but then scrapped it all when I realized how impossible that is when you’re surrounded by the coolest, smartest, funniest, hippest and most interesting people in the world – yourselves included.

Happy New Year, friends.

#1. Be nicer to yourself and those around you: knocking yourself down doesn’t get you anywhere besides stuck in the mud.

#2. Spend more time doing than you spend planning: a simple step in the right direction is better than any conversation about moving forward. (This changed my life last January.)

#3. No one sits around thinking about how they can make your life easier. Except maybe your mom. And she’s already put in her time.

#4. Fail often but fail fast and learn something new every time. Wouldn’t you rather realize you failed after an hour rather than six months?

#5. Tell people what you want instead of just hoping for it. Bonus: know who to turn to for what you need, when you need it.

#6. Say no to things that you don’t want to do. I mean, maybe not hygiene or rules of the road, but things like cookie swaps and sub-sub-committees.

#7. Focus on your cheerleaders and forget the downers. You think the Kardashians read our tweets? Nope – they’re busy making millions.

#8. Celebrate the people doing what you want to do. There’s room for all of us to be successful and hating each other certainly isn’t going to get us there.

#9. Be the first to bet on yourself. If you don’t buy it, nobody else will.

#10. Lean into your community: you’ll be amazed at what they can help you accomplish when you give them the chance.

*My lawyers suggest not making jokes when it comes to business proposals. So to be clear, I meant ‘unlimited hats, bragging rights, and lots and lots of money as to be determined by my representatives that boast a more sound and rational perspective that is not as easily clouded by pretty hats.’

Photo Credit: tweetheartwallar

As we seem to be coming up on a month since the finger-breaking injury and the abrupt end of my promising dodgeball career, it’s time to start thinking of new ways to put my dramatic, stainless-steel splint to new use. Because when your universal health care gives you shiny solutions for your physical flaws, you take that shit to the BANK. It’s what my uninsured American brothers and sisters would want me to do.

My pinky finger seems to be doing really well and is no longer determined to reduce me to tears on a daily basis. Sure, it’s not perfect and seems to have gotten comfortable in its stand-offish skew meant to let all my other fingers know that he totally thinks they’re beneath him (my pinky is a dude named Keith. Keith Richards. Don’t question me), and sure, the tip is still super sensitive, but overall I’m much better than I was. And…

No wait – you know what? I’m going to stop right there. Because as soon as I wrote ‘tip,’ I just know that all of you snorted and went all, “Ha! He said tip!” So just for a second, let’s try this:

Hi, English language-speakers. Can we talk about how angry it makes me when society jumps on some sitcom-esque, blanket punchline that sucks the wind out of my complicated, moderately entertaining monologues? And yes, that’s my fancypants way of saying that the next person who hijacks my story (which as you all well know can take anywhere from 500-1200 words to play out in full) with a ‘that’s what she said’ is getting a leather boot to the pancreas courtesy of Stephen Fry.

I don’t care if I said ‘tip,’ or ‘hard,’ or ‘stuck.’ Those, and the many other words you’ve taken to signal your cue for drunk comedy club patron behaviour are now going to be mine again. Trust me – my joke is going to be funnier than yours. It may take some time…but it’ll be funnier. And you know what? I’ll even let you keep ‘moist’ as a show of good faith. That’s a gross word that deserves nothing more than second-rate mockery.

Okay. Back to business. Here’s the start of my master list of uses for my faithful sidekick and most treasured accessory, the silver pinky splint. Be sure to add your own in the comments. I will attempt to do as many of them as possible while securing photo and video evidence:

• My personal insignia of James Bond villainy.
• The next Lady Gaga music video accessory.
• Dramatically flipping an imaginary hair strand out of my face when stating my diva demands.
• Using the cool metal to reduce the bags under my eyes after holiday benders.
• Keeping children away with rumours that I use it to slice throats.
• One half of a makeshift set of finger bells.
• Freezing it for use in rudely waking up the newf with naught but a gentle touch.
• Making a case for using handicapped parking.
• Getting out of the next season of dodgeball.
• Putting it on my pinky toe and pretending to be a velociraptor.

Now you go.

Today, I thought I’d try a little something different. Some of you may not realize this, but we’re coming up on the official five-year anniversary of this blog. Whoa, right? Blogging came into my life just a few months after meeting the newf which has given him plenty of time to grow into his role as a Joanna Lumley-esque, spotlight-stealing guest star. An impressive feat considering the many reasons why you’ve gotta be out-of-your-mind crazy to willingly date a blogger.

In a rare moment in his honour, I thought I’d cover the two equally important roles that he plays oh-so well in being the Corky to my Murphy Brown. I wish nothing more than for this to help guide you single guys and gals out there to not just love and happiness, but to a useful spouse who can earn their keep in a blogger household. You’ll thank me later.

The first common blogger-spousal role is that of The Voice of Reason. And thank god for that. While I see how quickly I can work my way through a bottle of wine while forcing my boozey thoughts upon the internet, the newf is usually busy keeping us afloat with forward-thinking finances, responsible choices, and grown-up plans. Without him, all those end-of-the-bottle ideas like “I swear, you give me two months and I can make 98 Degrees hot again. And the first month will be just to give the ugly one the slip. This is my new calling,” would actually take over my life for weeks at a time. Instead, I share these ideas with you, the newf stands in the corner with his arms folded, and we’ve got instant odd-couple hilarity.

Bonus Points: this hilarity does not come at the expense of my future which will be much appreciated when I’m 45 and the internet doesn’t exist anymore and all my life’s work toward making faceless strangers care about my zany adventures proves to be in vain.

Another, more fun take on being a blogger spouse involves being The Quippy Sidekick Who Says What Everyone Else Is Thinking If Everyone Else Were To Be Half In The Bag At All Times. This one is a slap-stickier take on reversing the previous roles. It’s also internet humour gold. Bloggers with a solid lock on an unintentionally funny significant other have got it made. They don’t even have to write anymore, they just have to sit back, wait for the next obnoxious statement, and blog that shit.

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, but the newf does this one really well too. He’s basically a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to fulfilling his quota of bloggable whimsy. From randomly signing us up for water aerobics without asking first, to saying things like: “Could you get me an episode of those burger hose? The borgableese? The blagahoo? Fuck it – you know what I mean…the dirty pope show,” my man can definitely bring it.

The only problem with my blogging muse (self-proclaimed) is that occasionally, he knows it all too well. Lately, he’s taken to saying such foolish things as, “God. You wouldn’t even have a blog if it weren’t for me. I’m what the people want – you’re just the middle man,” before spouting off a series of rimshot-worthy one-liners, each followed by a, “are you writing this down? I don’t see you taking notes…it’s okay. I’ll wait.”

And it’s around then that he gets really unbearable in a Mariah-looking-for-three-dozen-morning-doves kind of way and I set out to take him down a peg. Which is what this post is actually all about despite the guise of it being a happy-go-lucky anthem for unappreciated blogger spouses.

You thought I was actually being nice? You must be new here. You see, kicking things off with a “SUCK IT. I MADE YOU AND I CAN BREAK YOU,” just seemed unnecessarily vulgar and I consider myself to have more tact than that. But let’s be serious: there will be no posts here about how amazing anyone is unless they’re about me. Get your own blog, losers.

So, in the spirit of putting an imaginary competition ahead of my relationship, it is my greatest pleasure to announce to you that up until last month, the newf didn’t know that there was a system to making rows disappear in Tetris. I’mma let that sink in for a minute…

No really. Since approximately 1993*, he thought the disappearance of rows happened by some random special surprise or by moving certain colour blocks from side to side as often as possible before they hit the bottom, skewing his entire understanding of the game. And that’s how he’s been playing UNTIL LAST MONTH.

Now, I don’t mean to be cruel. But to me? This is the BEST NEW THING TO EVER HAPPEN TO ME FULL STOP EXCEPT NOT FULL STOP BECAUSE WE NEED A COUPLE OMG YAYZERS IN THERE FOR GOOD MEASURE.

Why? Because now whenever he slips into The Voice of Reason role and gives me the side-eye when I can’t answer a single question on the math quiz he gave his sixth graders (fuck off, okay? I have a calculator. Eat shit, elementary curriculum), I can pummel his vintage video game knowledge gap until he’s weeping under the glow of an original Game Boy.

And isn’t that what relationships are really all about?

*No – he’s not a child. I made a guesstimate as to when he would have first played Tetris.

Photo Credit: autowitch