Some people find it embarrassing to write favourably about themselves, but to an NPD sufferer like myself, it's easy.
- In 2006 I celebrated my first complete year of HNT therapy. The results have been encouraging, but there's more to be done in 2007.
- There was a while in 2006 when my bloglife was one big party, with pals incuding: alistair, eric, heather, hotboy, keda, lee ann, menzies milngavie, ray ray and the HNTers. That was before I joined the bad boy church and everything went pear-shaped.
- 2006 was the year I was ordained into the Bloggy Church of the Bad Boys, and it was a proud day when I completed the beginner stage of their training programme in badness. The results have been startling. I have managed to piss off just about everybody I know, and probably many people I don't know. For someone who has been a nice chap all his life, that's a big achievement.
Of course, I couldn't have done it without the chemical help of the Soaraloft™ antidepressant medication. Any drug that converts introverts to extroverts overnight is going to be a big help in annoying other people. Natural extroverts have spent a whole lifetime learning how to be loud and self-centred but in a socially-acceptable way. An overnight extrovert like myself is bound to be a social bull in a china shop. Intoxicated with the new skills I've learned - like interrupting people and talking over the top of them, or insulting women and other disabled groups (you see, there I go again) - I just don't know when to stop. Natural extroverts know how to stop before going too far.
I even managed to offend just about every blogvisitor and all my email friends, without even trying. Imagine what I could do if I really put my mind to it! - I endured 3 weeks staying at my aunt's place, without giving in to the desire to throttle her. A big achievement. Once again, I couldn't have done it without the Soaraloft.
- In 2006 I tasted Weissbier for the first time. I don't know if it's some kind of placebo effect, but it seems to make you miles happier than normal beer. The only problem is the cost. I've seen what the expense can do to people, it makes them double their overdraft overnight. I have looked into home-brewing it, but you need to buy special imported yeast and then spend hours in the kitchen with pressure cookers and muslin bags.
- One of my students at the McDonald Institute sent me a nice email at the end of the year:
I would like to thank you for the past few months in your class, I thoroughly enjoyed it and got a lot out of it, so much so that I now intend to .. [go on to a higher qualification] .. in the not too distant future. I always found you very approachable and really helpful, encouraging me to think things out in my own head first instead of just giving me the answers. I felt that I could ask questions at any time and you were always there to help no matter how simple or how technical the question. I also liked the way you would give us extra work to do if we wanted more, also how you encouraged us to experiment a little by trying different coding, sometimes just to see what it does or to show that there is more than one way of completing a task. So thanks again.
I couldn't have put it better even if I'd written it myself. Of course my first thought was somebody was setting me up, but it appears genuine. What a fortunate creature I am! - Marty, a guy I knew in Detroit when I was a kid, found his name on my blog while he was ego-googling. He got in touch, and we did some catching up in the comments. And I caught up, by email, with another old friend I had lost touch with years ago. Sad that we had to wait until her breast cancer, but getting re-acquainted has been a delight, and I've done my best to provide some support in her time of trauma.
Finally, this is the time of year when I should really apologise to everybody I offended in 2006. I'm really just a simple nice guy trying to discover his inner bastard. On the other hand, I know someone who's a bad-tempered bastard on the surface, struggling to express his inner sweet guy. Everything balances up.
And a happy new year to my remaining reader. If you can't be bothered doing the meme at your place, feel free to post some of your own 2006 high points in a comment here.
