A while ago, I blogged about the problem of organizing and remembering the vast quantities information I encounter every day on the Internet. Since then, I’ve become an assiduous user of Delicious.com and Google Notebooks, with YouNote on iPhone as a backup plan, but it doesn’t seem to help. I still feel overwhelmed. More than that, I still feel like I am reading, perusing, and admiring things but retaining none of it.

I’m starting to feel like technology is actually the culprit here. Rather than helping me index information for easy retrieval forever and ever into golden posterity and as a result making me a smarter, happier, more informed individual, it’s just making me darn lazy. I’ll admit it, I’ve developed Instapaper Syndrome. The variety of organizational technologies out there enable me to see something cool and think “Ah, I’ll note this down so I can check it out later.” Later never comes. Don’t even look at my Instapaper account; it’s embarrassing.

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“If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.”

- James Cameron, from The New Yorker

It’s resolution time again! This year, I’ve decided that I’ve had it with realistic resolutions. In the spirit of that crazy man quoted above, it’s time to break free of the chains of reason. Therefore, I am assigning myself 10 totally unachievable goals this New Year’s. Rather than trying to achieve them literally, I will look to them to inform my day-to-day activities, in the hope that I will become a smarter, healthier, more creative, and overall more better human person in the upcoming year.

Here goes:

• Sketch every single day for at least 1 hour
• Read a book every other week, alternating fiction and non-fiction
• Blog every other day
• Get up promptly when the alarm clock sounds and read the entire front page of nytimes.com over breakfast before going to work (this is probably the least realistic, actually.)
• Only focus on ONE interesting thing found on the Internet each day
• Cook through all the cookbooks I own
• Cut down the amount of my possessions by half
• Not yell at Yang ever
• Brush Lulu daily

And finally (hopefully this is not actually unrealistic):

• Get into the MFA in Interaction Design program at SVA

I don’t know why, but I’m just about ready to pass out. See, this is why I don’t write in my blog. This was supposed to be a long weekend. Don’t people typically relax and drink martinis on long weekends? And I was originally going to go visit my mom. Instead I danced in a parade, had dinner with folks I worked with who I haven’t seen in a long time, worked on ridiculously elaborate Halloween costumes (basically I am trying to make Yang a Daft Punk getup. Out of paper mache. I know, Daft Punk does not do paper mache, but I’m not a big fan of Bondo fumes in a small city apartment, soooo…), and, last but not least, attended a 9-hour event at MIT called Startup Bootcamp.

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So I think I’ve been too busy living life lately to blog.

We’re now past the mid-way point of summer. Every summer passes too fast, regardless of whether you are on a break from schooling or now hauling your ass through the 9-to-5 grind. It just seems to be in the nature of summers to start off hopeful, effervescently charged—then to speed by like a blinded racehorse through a field of very tall grass—and to disappear. And every year, as July wanders into August, I get very restless because now we’re in the home stretch and plans have to be made good on, duties and ideas carried out, etc. etc.

I’m also getting rather restless of late because of this whole idea of living life. This feeling started soon after I graduated and I actually started to have enough time to do things other than study and write papers. Things like to really savor the time I spend with people I love, to wonder semi-full-time about the future, to engage in activities of an indulgent and somewhat domestic nature (cook, decorate, recreationally care about what I wear gasp!), etc. Now I am well-supported with a steady job, well-loved by a steadfast significant other, and well-ensconced in a beautiful apartment in one of the trendier neighborhoods of the Metro Boston Area. I find myself thinking day after day, against all my more ambitious yearnings, Wow, I could get used to this. Screw grad school screw changing the world screw opening minds and eyes with art and design. Just passing the days in a muted golden way. I know. It makes me sound downright elderly. I’m 23. But hey, in these summer days I see the shape of lifelong “happiness,” that elusive unicorn, taking shape. It is fucking gorgeous.

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Last night, I almost passed out in Copley station.

I don’t have that gene that correctly encodes the enzyme that converts acetaldehyde into acetic acid. In other words, when I drink, I don’t metabolize alcohol all the way. Acetaldehydes, toxic as they are, accumulate in my bloodstream, as opposed to turning into the relatively benign acetic acid. This translates into me being extaordinarily bad at “holding down” my alcohol. After about a half-drink, my pulse races, I feel lightheaded (which turns out to be a distinct symptom from actual inebriation), and my ears, followed by my face and eventually my entire body, begin to get hot and flushed. However I have historically been able to hold down one drink, no problem. One drink was my limit, I was aware, so I never felt the need to push beyond it.

Last night, I had a highball glass-sized serving of a mojito, and not even all of it. It was about three-fourths of it. Turns out my limit can be a lot lower than I thought it was.

After leaving POPS, a restaurant at the South End, I found it increasingly difficult to walk. Yang found this amusing, as did I at the time. We got to Copley Station and waited for the train. I found myself getting progressively sleepier until I had to lean on Yang to stay standing. Then, all of a sudden, the most extraordinary feeling came over me: first I lost my hearing. It was perplexing because one minute I was in a loud station with the distant shrieking of train cars grinding against their tracks. The next it was silent and muffled. Then, I lost my vision almost entirely; I remember being aware of where things where, but couldn’t actually “see” anything. Then I began to get very lightheaded. And then I was struggling to breathe. At this point I was very aware that if I passed out, this could potentially be very very bad. I did not want to end up at the BMC because I had 3/4 of a mojito. So, in a cold sweat, I tried my hardest to repeatedly force air through my lungs. I had no idea what I looked like to outsiders or how successful it was; it didn’t feel very successful at all, as it seemed that my lungs forgot how to reinflate themselves. Yang maneuvered me to the bench and I sat down, kept trying to breathe. I was freaked out beyond belief. I don’t know how much longer this went on for, but eventually the feeling subsided. I ended up afterwards with a pounding headache and a wrench in my abdomen.

Remarkably, I did not throw up when we got home, and a few hours later I was fine. But I do remember waking up at 4 a.m., completely vexed by the possibility that I might experience the threat of asphyxiation again. It took me a bit to get back to sleep.

Call it what you will—extreme Asian blush, alcohol poisoning, overdosing—it was not a good experience. I now know better than to try and finish one drink. However, given that I’ve had a whole day of lucidity (no hangover) to ponder this, I’m both saddened and frustrated by this. Especially as Yang finds it entertaining to flaunt his Asian but nevertheless functional genetic makeup every time we encounter alcohol together. Through no fault of my own, I cannot simply savor a good tipple like any self-respecting serious foodie. On winetasting tours, I am the first to resign myself to waiting in the car. At dinners out, I am the first to lose my ability to engage in meaningful conversation or attentive tasting of the food. There is a world of flavors, textures, and scents from which I must quarantine myself. The injustice of it all.

I should perhaps stop whining (hah) about this. At least I am able to have some cheese with that. (Thank you, Yang.) On a more upbeat note, I have yet to find myself put in grave physical danger by a cheese. Yesterday, while wandering through the South End, we happened upon a little Formaggio, where I picked up a jar of fig jam and some of the most unbelievably creamy comté ever. Which I shall have tomorrow. Without wine.