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It’s been a while since I’ve had the chance to do this. I might’ve forgotten how. Updates to come, once I get around to re-reading the manual.

As one would expect around this time of the year, the internet is rife with “Best of everything” lists. Pitchfork and Stereogum bibles be damned! 

It’s been almost a year since I swapped a full-time day job for a full-time freelance gig. If there’s one thing I quickly discovered, the idea of being able to wake up daily at 11am and spend the rest of afternoon on the PS3 while work miraculously sorts itself out turned out to be a complete myth. The notion of freelancing being very “free” is quickly disproved by the more constant work hours (ie: what is a weekend?) and the round-the-clock urge to get shit done.  

But as you would be in a retrospective mood on the eve of a new year, it’s personally quite mind-blowing for me to imagine that just 10 months ago, things were vastly different: I’ve traded daily traffic jams trudges, nightmarish parking lot ordeals and long work hours for a lot of smaller, less glamourous perks that have longer-lasting mileage (ie: being able to work in soft shorts and comfy t-shirts that have forsaken the right to ever be worn in public). 

And with things on the up, I surprised myself by making the decision to set up a company, all real and proper, like. Might this send me down the path of loafers, chino slacks, a subscription to Monocle, investments in the stock market and a sudden urge to “diversify my portfolio”? 

Not just yet. Or unless I luck out and get bitten by a radioactive entrepreneurial spider that helps me fast-track my career in the fashion of a modern day Howard Hughes, not likely at all.

For the time being at least, I’m pretty content juggling a nasty comic book reading habit and struggling with the finer points of business administration (what the fuck is a cash flow sheet and why does it hate me?). 

Minor achievements and cool / weird shit that happened to me in 2011 (inspired by Wordsmanifest): 

• Ditched the whole 9 to 5 thing. 
• Discovered an even weirder 10 to 2 and 5 to 11:25 arrangement. 
• Successfully casualized my working dress code even further - from “t-shirt and jeans” to “shorts and frayed wifebeaters”. 
• Had breakfast with an Opposition Party MP.
• Inglorious honor of being able to include “FHM Writer” to my CV. This makes me giggle like a schoolgirl.
• Awkwardly, started my own company.  
• Got my first ever parking ticket. 
• Went for my second-ever holiday in my adult, working life. The last one was back in 2007, I think. 
• Hiked up what in my mind, felt like a really small mountain, but in reality, probably just counts as a hill (the highest peak of Cameron Highland’s Tea Plantation). Still, ball-freezing cold and steep inclines did not make it an easy trek. 
• Adopted a dog with a propensity for NSWF sleep postures.
• For a season, went pretty apeshit on Japanese buffets.
• For a season, went pretty apeshit on Banana Leaf meals. 
• Since then, have had to consciously exercise to keep the belly low-profile.
• Caught Gruff Rhys’s KL gig - best solo concert ever.
• Was one of the witnesses at a friend’s Registration of Marriage. Discovered that it involves putting your signature on a sheet of paper. And looking deadly serious. 
• Finally finished Batman: Arkham City, about a year late. 
• Rewarded myself with my first ever year-end bonus. Promptly bought a 40” TV right after. 

The last 2-3 years of my life have, for the most part, been overwhelmingly dominated by the pedantry of adulthood and working life. I suppose it’s an inevitability: the unbridled recklessness of youth and the pursuit of adventure eventually takes a backseat to paying bills, saving for the future, matrimonial best man duties, trading in sneakers for loafers and such. 

Over the span of the last 2-3 months, I’d taken active measures to ease the workload in an attempt to gain a semblance of balance between work and play. Less meetings and killer deadlines, more FIFA and comic books. In the midst of doing what are obviously young men’s fancies, there’s a curmudgeonly part of me that scoffs at how such things can be seen as a massive waste of time - immature and being of little value (apart from the rare occasions where pop-culture knowledge gives an edge in Trivial Pursuit or Pictionary). 

If there’s one thing about myself that I’ve been told often enough to believe, it might be the observation that I’ve always been mature for my age. While this was likely more evident in my younger days when it was easier to appear level-headed and mature when juxtaposed with college fratboy-types, I’ve always wondered whether it was maturity born out of genetic hardwiring or simply the byproduct of filial piety, Catholic upbringing and ultimately, a pitiful weekly allowance (youthful recklessness was often expensive and having little money as a teen meant having to find cheaper, but often more constructive ways off passing time).

You spend most of your early years wanting to grow up as soon as possible and the irony of adulthood is realizing what a shit deal it is. 

As my twentysomethings dwindle out, it’s pretty obvious that I’m more intent on regressing as the years go by, as if to make up for fast-tracking adulthood way too early on. While my peers are starting businesses, getting married, having kids and deliberating on various shades of wallpaper and furnishing, I’ve spent most of my time wondering whether I’ve missed out on some of the cheaper thrills of youth like listening to shitty bass-drenched music, practicing poor personal hygiene and the like.

All of a sudden, I find myself in the awkward zone between kidult and whatever else is beyond that stage in life, struggling to cling on to the last vestiges of youth before it explodes in an unspectacular and underwhelming display of fireworks that spell out the word “O-L-D”. 

I’m not really sure what 2012 brings and the apathy settling in means I can’t really be arsed to think too far ahead. All I can think of now is how I probably owe it to myself to make up for all those lost weekends with a hardcore diet of video games (FIFA 12, Uncharted 3, Skyrim, Arkham City), TV shows (Mad Men S2 - S4, Ugly Americans S2) and my obscene pile of comics purchased, but not read.

Long story short: I’ve been working really hard just so video games can ruin my life for the next 3 months or so. And then when Diablo 3 launches, things get really bad.

Until then.