Happy new year! It’s 2016 and my “big dumb life project” is officially up and running: Richard’s 2016!
To recap: I’m living each day of the year according to the ‘day of the year’ it is.
It’s not been the most spectacular start, but here’s the rundown of how the first week has gone.
JANUARY 1ST: COPYRIGHT LAW DAY
Yay! Copyright Law! Way to start on a high note, 2016.
Seriously, I almost considered packing the whole idea in right away with this. What a terribly boring day. But there was good news. The website I use (daysoftheyear.com) had this advice for celebrating the day:
The best way to celebrate Copyright Law Day is to think of a way to show your gratitude to the creators of some computer program or work of literature, music or art that you particularly enjoy
Easy enough. So I tweeted some content creators!
Some good likes and stuff in there I guess. Hooray. A New Year’s Day success.
JANUARY 2ND: SCIENCE FICTION DAY
Great, I love science fiction. So this was a bit easier. First up, I whipped on this Bender t-shirt:
Then I went over to the Cambridge Computing History museum. I did stuff like this:
“But wait!” you say, “Computing isn’t science fiction! It’s just plain old science!”
First of all, shut up! Secondly, I took the time to have a go on an original Commodore 64 version of The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy video game. It’s one of the best and funniest text adventures ever made (I died SO much). Play it yourself here.
In the evening, I watched Attack the Block. It was very science fiction and quite good.
JANUARY 3RD: DRINKING STRAW DAY
I attempted to drink everything through a straw. However, I don’t actually own a straw so literally had to go to a pub and make an arse of myself for this one.
JANUARY 4TH: HYPNOTISM DAY
By this point of the year I was quite ill. Too much Christmas celebrating and not enough sleep I reckon. Drinking a pint through a pub straw probably didn’t help either.
Thankfully, Spotify has lots of self hypnotism albums! And I found one that promised to make me feel better: Hypnosis For Pain Relief And Mind Body Healing, Chronic And Acute Pain Control. So yeah, I gave that a listen.
It did not make me feel any better.
JANUARY 5TH: BIRD DAY
Harder than you think. I tried birdspotting (well, I looked out of a window for a bit). But I didn’t really see much. Instead, I decided to eat chicken for lunch AND dinner.
McNuggets for dinner. (Not McPictured).
In retrospect, I should have had an EGG for breakfast. But c’mon it’s early days still. Besides, there’ll most likely be an egg day at some point.
JANUARY 6TH: THREE KINGS DAY BEAN DAY
Ok, so the website I’m basing this on said that January 6th was Three Kings Day aka Epiphany aka Twelfth Night. However, on the 5th I went to see a splendid production of Twelfth Night in London.
It was a charity production full of comedians I like and was really good.
It wasn’t really fair for me to celebrate the same day again on the 6th. So I kinda cheated and opted for Bean Day instead.
I struggled through the whole day trying to find beans. Try as I might, I couldn’t find a bean bag to sit on, nor was anyone willing to call me “old bean.” Instead, I just settled on having beans on toast for dinner.
No picture because you know what a 26 year old eating baked beans looks like. Maybe you even are one.
JANUARY 7TH: I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE DAY
Today! So I’m guessing this one is a reference to that Network movie, right
But I didn’t fancy a full-on breakdown at work or shouting at anyone.
Instead I focussed on an actual problem in my life: my house. My house has been having power cuts pretty much weekly for years. I’ve reported it to my letting agent, and they’ve done nothing about it. Recently, I managed to get them to send an electrician round – but he had absolutely no idea what was causing it.
This morning I was woken up at 5.30 by yet another power cut (yes, I can hear power cuts). Mad as hell, I wasn’t going to take it anymore. So I emailed my letting agent AND the electrician to complain.
All my letting agent did was forward my message onto the electrician. That’s kind of annoying, as I basically called the electrician useless. Long story short, he gave me a call in my lunch break.
Given the nature of the cuts (random, happen at night) they reckon it’s either my fridge or the boiler as these are the only things that are always on. BUT they can’t narrow down what it is. So they want me to either turn off my fridge or my boiler and see what happens.
Obviously this is terrible. Turn off my fridge and all my delicious food spoils. Turn off my boiler and I lose all my radiators and hot showers (by the way, I’m still quite ill). My housemates don’t really fancy either option. So I’m stuck.
Power vs. Food vs. Hot Water. A true trilemma. I really don’t know what to do. So I guess I’ll have to take it for a little bit longer until I figure something out. Grr.
What a week, eh! What’s next week got in store for me?
- 8th: Show & Tell At Work Day
- 9th: Apricot Day
- 10th: Bittersweet Chocolate Day
- 11th: Step in a Puddle and Splash your Friends Day
- 12th: Pharmacist Day
- 13th: Peach Melba Day
- 14th: Hot Pastrami Sandwich Day
Erm, cool. A lotta food in there. And some tough ones.
Tune in next week to see how I get on, I guess? Or follow the action on Twitter with hashtag #Richards2016.
ps. I discovered another fine fellow on Twitter doing a similar project to me. Follow him here.
This is great! Though I kinda wish you’d went with ‘straw bear day’ today. I think you’d make a fantastic straw bear!
Best wishes,
A fan in The North.