lorem ipsum

So…uhhhh…remember how I said that I knew I was obsessed with wordles, indicating that I should probably stop making/posting them so much?

Well, here’s just one more. This is it. I swear. I can stop anytime I want. Really.

What’s so cool about this one, you ask? What makes it different from the others? Well, instead of being cobbled together from my Twitter, this wordle was made from your replies to me. That’s right; this one is constructed exclusively from posts starting with “@naporeon“. I’ve left your usernames as well, with the exception of poor @smarthero, whose truly immense number of replies to me made his name so large that practically nothing else could be read.

Here’s what you had to say…

As you probably already know, Twitter is often the last, delicate thread, suspending my precious, precarious sanity over the gaping maw of workplace ennui. A minute or two here and there spent browsing #6ws/#sixwordstory, @stephenfry, or @THE_REAL_SHAQ (in addition to my many actual friends who tweet) is often enough to pull me from my narcoleptic reverie, and refocus my energies on what really matters…curing the hell out of AIDS.

But I jest! (Mostly.)

So…Twitter. I’ve found some cool web apps devoted to it, recently. One, TweetStats, gives you all sorts of cool, nerdy graphs, describing your tweeting habits in precise, chronological detail. And another, Wordle, the subject of this very tweet, arranges your most commonly used words (default = 150), sized by frequency of use, into a…well, something. A piece of word-art? I’m not sure. Either way, you can see mine by clicking HERE, or — if you haven’t done it already — by clicking on the embedded image above.

Or, if you’d like to create your own, you can head to their website. There are many cool options, as far as color, font, and layout go, and it’s a pleasant diversion from whatever you’d be more properly focusing on right now.

Happy tweeting, folks, and I’ll have an actual post — though possibly private — sometime in the next little while.

Thanks to one particularly unsubtle person, it has been brought to my attention that LoudTwitter has not only been making good on its motto of “delivering tweets by the dozen”, but has in fact decided to take it up a notch, and start redelivering tweets…if not by the dozen, then at least by the generous handful. I’ll try to keep an eye on it in future, but I like microblogging, so I’m not quite ready to give up on Twitter and LoudTwitter just yet. I am however shaking a cross finger at them.

As an aside, yes, I do intend to post that private post I alluded to. I really am sorry it’s late. Long-time followers of my blogging will no doubt recall, however, that I have historically struggled to make substantial posts when I am very happy and satisfied. And with the last week-plus being what it has…

I suppose it would be appropriate to start by saying that my health situation is well in hand. The initial IV, medication switch, dietary tweaks, and supplements appear to have more of less gotten things in check. I am sleeping much better, aching much less, no longer cramping, reacting much better to stress, and appear to no longer have irregular heartbeats. Also, my memory has improved substantially. This is super news, since there’s much to suggest that my condition was having a real, persistent, deleterious effect on my quality of life, both physically, mentally, and socially.

Someone recently asked me whether, if given the opportunity, I would choose to rewind the last year, and start 2008 over again. Or, going further, whether I would choose to simply strike it out entirely. It’s a tough question, honestly. I lost three friends; one to suicide, and two to needless traffic accidents. I lost my grandfather. I had a falling out with one of my dearest friends, which kept us out of each other’s lives for several months. I became — and remain — estranged from my family, with whom I have always been fantastically close. I gained a fiancee and a lovely future stepdaughter, only to lose them both as well. I lived several months — at least — with a medical condition that might’ve killed me at literally any moment, and which damaged my life in many far-reaching, insidious ways.

Looking at it that way, it’s easy to imagine that I might be happy starting again or scrapping/forgetting the year altogether. Easy to imagine, but wrong.

I suppose that by most meaningful standards, 2008 was a year of loss for me. But loss, as it happens, is an excellent catalyst for growth. It’s possible that it’s just my new-found health talking, but the growth I experienced in 2008, particularly the last couple months and weeks…well, it was a trial, sure, but in most important ways, I am feeling better than I have in years, like I finally know what I want, and have the means to achieve it. Sure, it’s trite as hell, but I feel like the person I am now is the best person I have ever been, thanks in large part to the knowledge gained through much of that aforementioned loss.

The ultimate tragedy of knowledge gained from loss is that, by its very nature, it cannot be applied to mend that loss. One might learn many valuable lessons from one’s house burning to the ground, for example, but clearly, those lessons cannot then be applied to save the house. Those things we lose, they are the fuel for that growth, expended forever in the act of edifying us.

Really, though, trying times are sometimes required to give us those tools we need to craft a better, happier, sustainable future. And having received those tools, I count myself blessed.

This was not a mistake. Castle Crashers is a goddamned BLAST. Literally, as I generally play the little orange man. The only thing I’ve found frustrating is trying to figure out who’s driving, when I play with Cap and Kate.

Speaking of Kate…FUUUUUUUUUUCK YESSSSSSSSSSS! Miss Katherine Eudora Welsh gets finally gets her (thunder)butt out here this weekend! You can’t see me, but I’m squealing like a little girl right now.

We are going to do sooooooo muuuuuch shoe shopping, she’s going to land herself in debtor’s prison inside of two months.

And I swear, I am totally straight.

No, really.