Time is a strange thing.  I started college in 2005.  That's the same year Xbox 360 was released.  We were still on GameSpot.  That was the last year I used 3.5" floppy disks for storage.  The latest version of Internet Explorer was still IE6.  And I've gone through 3 separate obsessions from chess to StarCraft 2 to Dota 2.

Before this turns into an old-man rant of "back in my day" because that's the Hamster's job, let's skip ahead a bit.  It was 4 years ago now that I last really gave everyone an idea of where I am with my 2010 personal year in review.

Points there being ups and downs, mostly of downs.  And in terms of downs, I've been mostly on the down-low around here for past year and a half.  I finished university a year-April and started a fulltime job that September.  So between having Dota as my primary pastime and fulltime work load, it kind of shifted around timing.

So how was the past year?  Well we won't get a point-by-point breakdown, but I'll give you an overview.

I popped up with a video back around mid-August last year with my Unifying Theory of Me.  Unfortunately that video is lost to the ages, but I had something of a mental breakthrough in understanding what was holding me back from being happy.  Start of a long road.  It was a month later I would start at my current job.

Not counting the first two weeks, I've never particularly liked my job.  But because I am single-task-minded, despite having interest in looking elsewhere by the New Year, I set my goal for the year to find relationship success.  A lofty goal by any measure of my history, but the priority I had.  And went rather terribly.  By March steam had pretty much fallen out of that after a seemingly perfect set-up from a friend still failed to go anywhere.

Instead I made a plan.  I had put off driving for quite a while.  So I would complete the next level of my license, then get a car, then the following Spring, move and find work out of town.

Also in this time frame, I had tried some different things in hobbies and interests.  I had been a part of several Dota teams, captaining most, and been apart of multiple LANs, but could never get a consistent group, and interest waned after The Internation 4, the largest pro Dota 2 tournament, was awful to watch.

I also started working on voice work and impressions.  Unfortunately here, I was running into recurring throat issues coinciding with the timing of trying to do this.  The same affected casting and other broadcasting.

Another endeavour that was overarching to this was cooking.  Inparticular I found a fondness for making pizza from scratch.  Regardless, the plan continued.

That summer I passed my driving test.  Work continued to teeter above and below the line of tolerable.  And you saw that I did get my car.  But during this, something curious had happened.

While yes, I have not liked my job, that ended when I got out the door.  As soon as I was done work, I was done thinking about it.  I was free to enjoy my hobbies, as chaotic, eclectic, inconsistent and directionless as they may be.  My breakthrough was just that, as there was no falling back.

That, however, was not the most curious thing.  While that seemingly perfect match didn't work out back in February, we did continue to talk.  And by the end of July we decided to give it another chance.  And we've been together since.

Back around 2010 was when I came up with a measurement of my mental health and happiness: How much I coded on my own time.  I'm sure you've noticed The VG Press hasn't gotten a lot of love in that regard for quite some time, and that applies to all of my programming efforts.  Today I have been at my computer since I got home working at a new project I have going.

We've had nearly 6 years together here, and this has been the rock during those worst years.  Now we get to see where the best take us.