TBWCYL Day 365 - Newt Year, New You

At last, at last it has come to an end,
One year has ended, another begins.
I finished the journey of tasks to be done,
It seemed never ending, but we are on the last one.
A Party, a party to finish it all,
To celebrate my new self, the dropping of a ball.

We rang in the New Year with a party of close friends last night and thus the final task is complete. I completed(mostly) my 364 tasks in my amphibiously glorious fashion and to celebrate the accomplishment, my final task was to throw a New Year, New You party. We drank champagne, ate finger foods, lit a fire, and had sparklers and roman candles for the front yard as we welcomed in the year of the Tiger(2010).

And with this I come to a close on the experiment that was This Book Will Change Your Life. My first post on this can be read here but I decided to look back on it and see what I really wanted to do with this thing.

"I am going to do my damnedest to finish this experiment": That was apparent and easily my proudest part of the entire trip.

"you should see at least one new blog a day chronicling what the hell this book is telling me to do": In total there are now 372 different posts about this project so that seems to have been done. I might not have been daily but I covered every day.

"adding crazy shit into your life...and I am going to do it.": Mission accomplished

One unsaid thing that I set out to do was to entertain more people than I originally was. I was a lazy blogger at the time of this experiment and thought this would be a good way to force me into a habit of writing. I won't say I always wrote well, I never had perfect spelling, and my grammar could always use some work but I got into a routine of writing something almost everyday.

And I made friends, wonderful friends from all across the globe. I can't even begin to say how awesome that part of this was. It was something wholly unexpected and amazing to be able to say and I hope that part doesn't go away when I slow my blogging down. I especially want to think Kate, who hasn't been around lately but toward the beginning of this really promoted me when she didn't have to and got me integrated into what has come to be a community of people.

There was no way I could have guessed how difficult this would actually be. I kept it secret from my coworkers, I put myself in ridiculous situations, and I challenged myself to be and do things I would never have thought possible.

I think the biggest question I get from friends is, "Did it change your life?" The short answer is "Yes" but the all encompassing answer is more of a "sort of". No, I normally wouldn't have given myself an enema or eat unfamiliar foods but I never doubted I could do those things if I needed to.

I think the things that changed me the most were the ones that affected the world around me. The adventures in losing senses were eye opening, not talking showed me that when people think you are deaf they go out of their way to help and giving a homeless guy a $20 makes you just a little bit less cynical about the world. The biggest thing is the achievement of doing something that seems impossible one day at a time.

I won't be doing a sequel to this book, though there is more than one. I don't think it would be fair to me or my wife to put either of us through this again. I do want to continue with some recurring things and I am working on ideas for those but the daily thing is done for now. I am going to revel in my first day of task-free bliss and say...

That is all,

Newt