Good Riddance to 2011 (for me at least)

Cutter's Log - Stardate 2102.10.10
Current Song - Subdivisions (Rush)

Last year at this time, I was enjoying a walk through downtown Chicago and wanted to celebrate in the streets to ring in 2011. I happened to be hungry in the last half-hour of 2010 and had dinner at a restaurant on Wacker Drive. It was a more closed setting, with fewer people so I had a little better time in regards to having fun with people I didn't even know.

I christened my new year with a tinking of my glass of Pepsi with someone's bottle of Miller Lite.

This year, I'm sitting in front of the computer on my desk trying to get caught up on stories from Plano's Christmas tournament.

I christened my new year with a swig of a half-empty plastic bottle of Pepsi and gently hammering it down on my desk.

Buh-Bye, 2011!

Now let me continue limping into 2012.

I don't think I have ever had a year with more negative memories than postive ones. If you're a follower of this Blog (and with what has happened this year, who else is following this anymore?) you can read all about it in the Blog Archive to your right.

For now, I'd like to simply sum up what 2011 has been like - one last time thinking deep into these memories before simply moving on to an EVEN BETTER 2012.

1. Loss of Job - It's been four months, and I still haven't quite gotten over losing my job at the Shell station due to an alcohol sale violation. It was the second sting I had been in this year, as I had failed a cigarette one in February. Of course, this comes after a 2010 that I was named Employee of the Year for.

I still can't explain why one thing led to another, if that even happened. Shell had been the best job I had (even over SVN) and was the longest-tenured job that I had. Then to see it all come to and end ... it's like a chip leader in poker suddenly having an early exit after a few hands.

I can't change what happened. But there are a couple of parts of me that changed as a result of what happened.

First and foremost, my income fell. Going through the past four months without making money, and doing what I do with the website, is an experience I never want to have again. However, I realize that people go through this often. But at the same time, however, I still want to say that I don't ever want to go through this again. Right now I am scrablming to get finances in order.

Secondly and just as importantly, my morale fell. Because I was no longer behind the Shell station counter, I didn't get to interact with the usual customers that I had. My small talk, something very important to me as I'm not that sociable, was improving because I had been doing this for three years. Without the job, I kind of fell back into silent mode.

Lastly, my confidence fell. Because I had this sting violation, it will be front-and-center in my work history. In the past couple of months, I had applied for jobs at gas stations, and I'm very sure I was passed over again, and again and again because of these sting violations. Because I sensed this was happening, I didn't feel like sending out more applications and resumes as December dragged on.

Oh, there's more to this burden of a 2011. And right now there are a couple of immediate priorities I have to take care of before getting back in the job-hunt mode.


2. Losses of Hubba, Roger and Carol - Three of the children of my great-grandpa Holloway all passed away in the same year. The emotional toll is undescribable, and I can't even describe it.

Because I haven't gone out much outside of my work with high school sports, college classes, and my job and all, I rarely ever got to see Hubba, Roger and Carol. Sometimes I wish I did more often, and it's too late. These losses, in a way, helped reinforce my focus on my family.

But after going through all of that, I at least know where they are at. And they are not suffering anymore.


3. Another Loss - As I mentioned, regular customers at Shell were important to me. One elderly couple, Bill and Dorothy Schrader, were always there each night I worked. They played the lottery every night, with a small stack of Pick 3 tickets and scratch-off tickets. Dorothy had been in decline as the year went on due to Alzheimer's Disease, and had to be put in a nursing home. She passed away in July.

Because she was there every day, I had to see the decline first-hand. It wasn't a great experience.


4. Personal drama on the Message Board - This year was by far the worst year when it came to moderating the NISB Message Board. The attacks between posters was getting absolutely sick, and I had to do something about it. What I did was apparently over-the-top, and I not only lost the posters I was having problems with, but also some others that were on there simply for the wrong reasons.

To sum that up: In Winnebago in September, I was looked as a pretty good person. Now, I'm apparently the "Northern Illinois Sports Bitch."


5. A disasterous final weekend of Softball - With funds running low, I could only afford to cover the Class 3A/4A Softball Tournament by myself. We had three teams there: Marengo, LaSalle-Peru and Moline. Marengo and Moline won state titles. L-P took second. The exhaustion was dreadful, with back-to-back drives to and from Peoria mentally wrecking me.


6. A disasterous State Football Final weekend - We had four football teams in the State Finals in football this year, and since this happened after the Shell firing the funds were extremely low. Nothing done on time. Over-exhaustion. However, we did use a laptop for the first time, and that's the only think I can see an improvement on.


7. A disasterous Plano Christmas Classic - only in terms of NISB coverage. The tournament itself was wonderful. Bill and I worked out a plan to cover this year's tournament - the first with a record 24 teams - extensively. I made flyers and Bill wanted them out on the table "day one, hour one" at Plano. They were there, and they were still there after Belvidere won the tournament. Once again, nothing done on time and over-exhaustion. Both myself and Bill. Some coverage ideas never came to fruition.

The only thing that saved me was a Thursday detour to Prophetstown to cover the Hinckley-Big Rock and Prophetstown girls - 120 less miles to drive. Even that couldn't fully save me: I flubbed two interviews there, and for some reason I introduced myself as "I'm Cody, from the Website" to one of the girls.


8. The Week of Bad Driving - It all started the next couple of weeks after I was let go. Several missed calls. More importantly was a spin-around while driving in Normal during the State Volleyball finals. Then a week later, I was caught speeding in front of White Pines Park. I went back to Oregon to pay the fine, and then on my way back I almost rear-ended someone in front of Lowell Park in Dixon.

I had to park somewhere and try to get a hold of myself. The following week on my way down to Champaign for football, it felt like a longer drive because I was going slower than I was last year.

9. Realizing who my friends really are - As time simply goes on, there are more and more acquaintences from school days that fall out of touch. They either are too busy, or are simply tired of you. Somehow, I felt that the latter was happening to me. An example of this is simply looking at my friends' Facebook walls and comments, and then looking at mine. So, in trying to get my social life back in order, I prioritized my life a little better. More on this later.

10. The drama with brothers - When your brothers are noticing that you're in decline, and all they do is pester you about it, that's a problem. Somehow I don't get messages across to them as well as I should; and when I do, they think I'm the stupid one. A year of that hasn't reached the apex of revenge, but I was able to cool it with some thinking of my own.

11. An overall December collapse - In addition to the trouble at Plano, I saw all of my problems come to a head after overhearing a discussion amongst family members. What I took out of it was this: I'm slow, lazy, forgettable, and too in-tuned to the website that I run.


All told, January 1 should be the start of a brand new positive feeling. As for last year, I could not think of a single positive feeling other than improved traffic on the website. If there was, it has been overshadowed by the disasters of the year.

But - the more I think of it, there were two things that did stand out in 2011.

1. A few negative things came together, and I rolled that up into something positive. This was the Christmas present project I made for my brothers.

I started work on it a few months ago by tracking down the short family tree. The bulk of it was finding all of the cousins. I never fully completed it, but packaged what I had into five copies of what's called "The Six Degrees of the Cutter Crew." I have a feeling that the brothers really liked it, and mom and dad, grandpa, grandpa, and anyone else I shared this with really thought good things of this idea of mine.

For me personally, it opened up a few links with people I was related to.

2. This is going to sound very strange, but the only other thing I can think of as a postive in 2011 was that I saw someone who I think is the prettiest girl in the world.

Did I get to talk with her? Yes, and that went off without a hitch. Haven't talked with her since, however, and that was a couple of months ago. But it wasn't anything outside of the whole point why I wanted to talk with her in the first place.

How did this actually help me? It wasn't hard to tell who I had crushes on when I was in school. But this girl, was simply better than anyone I had fallen in love with in the past. This includes you-know-who, you-know-who and you-know-who. Therefore my drive was a little pumped up. I figured if I had any sort of shot at winning her heart I had to change a few things around in my life.

Now of course, simply doing that for this one girl would be borderline insane. However, I'm trying to use this experience to help me connect with girls - something that has been a major problem in my life for quite some time.