It’s only September and I already feel like 2009 has been the year of great personal improvement. I made new friends and met some very cool people. I learned to drive and earned my driver’s license. I learned to ride a bicycle for the first time ever. I expanded my knitting skills. On a rather nerdy and fulfilling note, I somehow found myself as a guest on two of my favorite podcasts. I also somehow managed to lose almost 20 pounds through a series of diet and exercise (I do have more to go though). You know how some people have their “life list”, the list of things they want to do before they die? I feel like I’ve knocked about 50% of that list in this one year. It feels that amazing.

And yes, I realize it’s only September, and things may go all pear-shaped before the end of the year. But for now, I’m seriously having a ball. If this is how turning 30 feels like, then all I can say about the rest of my thirties is: Bring. It. On.

That concludes my brief personal-blogging effort. You may now return to your regular Internet programming.

My career sputtered along in leaps and starts, and my finances are slowly but surely getting in shape. Brandon got laid off some time in mid-2008 but then rebounded in a satisfactory fashion by the end of it. I was involved in an emotional turmoil or two (as is my nature), but it was nothing too big to handle. I also started on my path to citizenship, which was kindly supported by many of you. Much love for that, of course.

The biggest changes happened to the people around me. Friends moved away, moved closer, got engaged, broke up, got hired, and fired. Which is pretty normal, of course, but all of it happening within the span of a few months is a little jarring, especially when you have a relatively small pool of pals in the first place. I also learned that I can’t please everybody all the time, and that my happy-go-lucky socializing days are largely behind me (Although I’m still down for the occasional beer at the pub).

I’ll be 30 years old in 2009. And if all goes well, I’ll also be an American citizen. It’ll be a pretty momentous year, in more ways than one, and already I’m feeling the nerves of it all. I’m in the waning months of my Saturn return, and I’m steeling myself for further probes into my delicate psyche. I already know a large part of the karma issue has to do with my family in Malaysia, whom I have been quietly neglecting. It’ll all come to haunt me in 2009; I can feel it (PS. Dad? Will you please let me know your email address?).

As I write this, it is the second day of the new year. It’s raining and gloomy outside, and it’s not even ten in the morning. The soft gentle glow of daylight persists through the gray sky, illuminating the wet pavement. Everything is strangely beautiful.

And so starts my cautious optimism for the year ahead.

With the talk of mixtape nostalgia and the new iTunes Genius random playlist generation, I am once again revisiting my seemingly unusual indifference toward music. I like music, really, I do. I have a last.fm account, I listen to Pandora occasionally, and I have a healthy music collection in my iTunes library.

But I’ve never obsessed over it. If I hear a song I like on the radio, I don’t really care to find out the artist, or the name of the song. If one day I happen to lose my entire music collection, I really wouldn’t care too much about it. I am horrible at music trivia, because I also don’t care to remember song lyrics, and I don’t care to remember who sings what. I just know I like songs with good rhythm, decent lyrics, and preferably a great musical hook.

(As a disclaimer, there are certain artists I tend to gravitate to. TMBG and Jonathan Coulton, mostly due to the geek factor and I like the lyrics. I also like catchy pop/techno tunes, like a lot of Daft Punk stuff. Indie pop is satisfying as well, but I can’t remember any artists names right now. See, this is what I mean by not caring enough to remember these things).

I’ve never ever created a mixtape. Of anything. I just never cared enough to do it. I do create playlists for running, but that’s a very different sort of thing. I also don’t have the quintessential “desert island playlist”.

It’s strange, but I think that this characteristic is probably one of the most isolating factors of my young adult life. Just like being a geek separates me from the jocks, just like being a minority female separates me from the white male majority, it’s this indifference toward music that has isolated me from involvement in typical twenty-something behavior. I don’t attend concerts (I have no desire to), I don’t read liner notes, I don’t know the difference between young Bowie and old Bowie, etc. I’m just mostly lost when it comes to this stuff.

And because I don’t get involved in this subculture, in this sort of community, I think I miss out on critical youth bonding moments. I think I miss out on the sort of thing that binds people together. You might say that I have other “bonding mechanisms” like pop culture and geek stuff, but music is such an integral part in so many people’s lives that it’s quite a different thing. Music is lifeblood to many people. To me, it isn’t.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this. I guess what I’m trying to say is I think part of why I’m sometimes weirdly neurotic and feel oddly outcast-ed by society, is that I don’t really “get” the way most people think. And maybe part of this is fueled by things as intangible and as out-of-left-field as my indifference toward things that matter to a great majority of people.

Or maybe, as Sam in Garden State would say, I need to listen to The Shins.

Also, I live too much in my head.

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June is almost over in the year 2008. It’s been a month since my 29th birthday, and I am feeling it. I can’t quite explain what it is — perhaps a sense of impending loss of innocence and youth, perhaps a sense of adulthood and responsibility raining down on me. I don’t really know. Lots of you out there are probably laughing at this confusion; after all, I’m not exactly old either.

But a part of me yearns for the days when I was relatively carefree. I could do things that I would never dream of doing now, when my moral compass was not so clearly defined. As many of you know, I am a terribly boring anti-social person. But I can assure you there was a time when that was just a facade, hiding my inner fiery personality. A few of you have had the privilege to see this personality come to life, and I believe that to be my true character. It’s the kind you see if you chat with me online, and it’s the kind you see if you get to be within my inner sanctum. It’s also the kind you see if you get me drunk enough for me to say things I would not normally say.

That said, there’s little I can do but move forward. And in the future, there be dragons. Dragons that will test my career, dragons that will test my marriage, and dragons that will test my sanity. As much as I try to bob and weave through them all, I realize that I will eventually have to draw out my sword and slay them. I’ll probably get hurt and wounded along the way, but in the end, it’ll be worth it. Well, until the next dragon comes along.

I guess I best get my suit of armor dusted off. It’s going to be a long fight.

Also, according to the LA Times’ birthday horoscope:

(May 15): This year, you master the art of having a good time. Your friends and family look to you to keep gatherings interesting. You don’t have to do anything but be yourself. Professional gains in June put your big plans within your grasp. Your connection with Cancer and Leo is tight. Your lucky numbers are 30, 1, 25, 39 and 16.

CBS buys CNET and my professional gains improve in June. COINCIDENCE? Well, yeah, probably, since astrology is mostly hogwash. But y’know, a girl can dream.

This also means I have less than year before I turn the big Three-Oh. Nervous? Why yes, but I’m also at a pretty good place in life right now. I think this will be a year where I finally hunker down and learn what it is to be an adult. I’m applying for my citizenship this year as well, which will be another big turning point in my life. All in all, I think I have a really big year to look forward to.

Bring it.

Three years later, and we’ve survived. A sudden move to a family home in order to salvage it. A maddeningly bureaucratic process to get me legalized. Both of us trading off periods of unemployment. Numerous emotional moments of us helping to save a pet we loved from dying. And through it all, we were each other’s rock, each other’s source of laughter, and each other’s unquestioning love.

Happy anniversary, Brandon Michael Hanvey. Here’s to many more years of love and joy.

That’s all I wanted to say.

I think, as I get older, and more committed to my work life, I don’t have a lot of patience and time to be social. Every once in awhile I break this habit, but it’s rare. Mostly because by the end of the work day, I just want to go home. When the weekend comes, I just want to stay home. Going out just isn’t a thing that I do on a regular basis. Not to mention that I’m trying hard to save money right now, and that’s not always possible when I’m out late at night.

I feel increasingly disconnected, and I don’t know if it’s my fault.

Watching videos and Flickr streams of my friends lives confuses me. Sometimes I feel joy for them. Sometimes I feel pain that I’m not in there. I don’t understand why I feel this way. Shouldn’t my friends happiness be my priority? Talk about first world problems.

It’s going to be weirder now that I don’t plan on attending SXSW next year. I feel disconnected from the people who are going. I don’t think I fit into the Web 2.0 crowd anymore. I feel too jaded.

Sitting here, deep in thought, I wonder if the disconnect is normal. As life moves along in its many ups and downs, as the tide ebbs and flows, surely these things happen. Was I ever connected in the first place? Does my shielded appearance and halted mannerisms deter me from being included? Or was I always included but never felt it? Do friendships flicker in the light of the Internet? Or do they puff out because I was too busy blogging about things rather than living them?

None of that made any sense, of course. But it did to me.

PS. I’m not talking about you.