This is gonna be the thread where we talk about stuff

If you make a New Year's resolution, you are less likely to follow through with it than if you simply decide to make a change in your life because it needs changing. This is a fact, and I'm really angry that I can't find the studies I'm looking for right now.

The thing is, if you try do something for a resolution, it's not a big failure. The difference between "I tried to quit smoking and I couldn't" and "I didn't really live up to my resolution" is enormous; nobody follows through on their resolutions, you and everyone around you will say, so it's not like it's really a problem. You won't try as hard if you attach your goals to a holiday known for failure, because hey, nobody can keep that stuff up for a year and nobody expects you to! You give yourself the feeling of "Hey, I tried" and continue doing the things you wanted to stop or not doing the ones you tried to start.

You need to make changes for yourself, not because there's an external impetus to make them, or you're not going to do it. By and large.

I think NTA used the right word when describing resolutions.

Silly.

The idea of New Years Resolutions is a fun something that shouldn't be taken too seriously either way. It is not for the serious-minded.

What most people here seem to dislike about them are those people who use resolutions as an absolute, as a singular means for getting something accomplished. People who take the idea of the resolution and use it as the primary driving force to encourage them to make an improvement or change in their life that they should really make regardless of what day it is, I think its pretty much universally understood that if this is how you practice New Years Resolutions...you're doing it wrong.

But I think it's important not to swing too far the other way either. To look at all the poor decisions and not-met goals that come out of other's New Years Resolutions and then denounce the whole practice as poppycock, I think misses the mark. It's being too serious, but in a completely different way.

Like SO said it is true that making a New Years Resolution makes it more likely that you won't get that goal accomplished. However I think that's tied in more to the fact that, as people, anytime you claim or say that you're going to do something, it gives you a similar feeling of satisfaction as actually doing the thing. Once you get that, the motivation for actual accomplishment can dwindle. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't say you're going to do things, it means that you need to keep that factor in mind and make that much more of an effort to see it through to the end.

Personally, I have a great fondness for New Years (and the resolutions that come with it). It's a holiday that's a lot like Easter in that it says: "Okay there may have been a lot of crappy things that happened to you, or that you did in the past, but now you have a fresh start." "It's a New Year, a New Beginning" ('New year, new life' as Ed mentioned).

Again, if you are someone (I don't think you are) who takes the New Year too seriously and makes it your primary motivation for making changes in your life, or holds off on making changes until a particular date, you're doing it wrong. But if you disregard the entire idea behind it as 'arbitrary', you're missing out.

Then again, it might just not be for you.

I really like the feeling of having a fresh calendar, the hope that comes with a blank-slate future. It's fun and rejuvenating. It's like waking up and realizing that not only is today a brand new day, it's a brand new year. The 365x worldwide recognized potential behind that (as Woffs put it) gives me a boost.

my really late new year's resolution/decision is to post on eagle-time more often because I keep forgetting to

It is the best resolution.

today I had some really good pasta
but now I feel sick because it's summer here

oh noooooooo

So is pasta + summer a recipe for sickness in Australia? You guys are a crazy bunch.

it was really rich/creamy pasta

What

What kind of pasta?

Rich and creamy is the best of sorts.

Waitwhat, who where Australia now O_o

It's summer here, too.

Except I live in California.

This weather just does whatever the hell it wants. I want to wear my new pea coat damn it.

:P So the seasons are subtler here. Fire season, flood season, fog season, smog season. THe world turns again.

Things I notice about the season:
Spring: "Yay, it's getting warmer!"
Summer: "IT'S TOO FUCKING HOT."
Fall: "Gosh, it's getting colder."
Winter: "IT'S TOO FUCKING COLD AND THERE'S ICE EVERYWHERE."

I am not a perceptive person but I sure as heck know what I dislike.

What

What kind of pasta?

Rich and creamy is the best of sorts.

fettuccine carbonara with prosciutto and parmesan cheese

it was really good, I just have trouble eating more than half of a regular restaurant portion in one sitting
and coupled with the heat it was just not something I'm used to I guess

I never realised how much I missed fact seagull until just now

Fact seagull is a constant of life. We're all delighted when we find ourselves embraced in it's beautiful wings of knowledge.

Also my place is hot and then cold like that terrible song by Katie Perry.

It's also pretty dry.

https://waterbotttles.tumblr.com/post/92...cts-thanks

All we have to remember him by
*lowers hat in remembrance*



<<Hmmm, I probably could try to make a looping flash movie with the facts moving around, that doesn't seem too hard actually. hmmmm>>

Ew, wow.

There was a fly buzzing round my room pissing me off, so I kinda backhanded it without thinking and caught it.

I chucked it in Juliet's box, wrote this, and now I'm gonna go and wash my hands.

Ew, wow.

There was a fly buzzing round my room pissing me off, so I kinda backhanded it without thinking and caught it.

I chucked it in Juliet's box, wrote this, and now I'm gonna go and wash my hands.

Keep the pimp hand strong.

So yesterday, I found out that my three closest friends all had TF2 already downloaded but had only played a few hours. I managed to get them all onto a server and we had a lot of fun playing around.

Speaking of friends and playing games together and bad segues, Schazer, Superfrequency, and I are planning on playing Diablo II together at some point, and were wondering if there's anyone else who'd like to join us.

Actually Supes set up a thread for this, as it turns out.

Playing Diablo ll is a Christmas time tradition with my cousin. We start a new game each time and never get very far. XD

Alas, I do not have the game myself.

Like two weeks late on the youtube talk:

Do any of you guys know if there's a way to skip/hide the awful youtube home page? I'm sick of having the featured and recommended videos shoved on my face.

Worst of all, the subscription buttons don't even work, i get 404'd.

so i'm doing a career-picking project using the oregon cis site right, and they have a big list o' jobs, but the jobs are all picked by people who can not conceive of not having a boring life. "automobile repair", "automobile maintenance", "auto body repair", and repairing just the windshield are all separate jobs, but "writing" is just one job that encompasses novelists, journalists, and the dude who writes wristwatch instruction manuals in one job title. same with "musician" or, y'know, anything you might want to be when you grow up.

Wheat, why do you always have the ability to make me laugh about everything?

Not to sound like a butthurt fan who just dramatically left the fandom© but i'm glad i stopped reading that.

Definitely to sound like a butthurt fan who dramatically left the fandom© a good while ago but I'm (usually) ecstatic I stopped reading that.

Some days you have to wonder what Hussie has to do for his next adventure. Homestuck's popularity owes in large part to being basically a comic about all of the internet, and people on the internet love reading about the internet. His next adventure couldn't also be both obliquely and overtly about the internet like Homestuck is, now could it? How is he going to keep all those fans that latched onto the "troll" personas that existed as part of a larger theme to ape those selfsame fan archetypes?