14th March, 2003

''where will you be? will you be happier than you are now? or will things not be as good? will you have taken a risk that you always wanted to take? or still be in the same place?''

I will be in the same place (unless I'm kicked out but i'm 99% certain that won't happen). I should prob start writing my thesis and prob looking for a job (hopefully an opportunity will come along).

Hopefully I shall be even happier but I'm content now (especially since I have met and learned quite a bit from being here ILX).

"Will you be happier than you are now?" Infinitely more so.

"Will you have taken a risk that you always wanted to take?" Several, and so far they've all paid off.

well, things are great!

initially they got worse, i got homeless, i didnt move forward with job, i finally lost my best friend...but from late sept onwards it has just been a whirlwind, many changes, many more likely. i could no way have predicted any of it really...

14 march 2002, i barely remember you

I can't download music any more though, which means I am pig-ignorant about virutally everything new that is mentioned on ILM.

On March 14th 2004 I will be a married man, blimey.

14th March 2002...
I had just graduated from NYU with a history degree, and was living in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Except I was horribly depressed, though no one noticed since I'm pretty good at hiding unhappiness. I was spending all day inside sleeping or downloading mp3s, and spending all night drinking. My hair was falling out and I had two huge bald spots on the back of my head. I spent a lot of time at the Union Square Barnes&Noble 2nd floor windowsill reading Lonely Planet travelbooks to places like Mali and Azerbaijan.

14th March 2003
I'm in Sydney, Australia after spending 6 months in Japan, Hong Kong, China, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Melbourne. I had saved up buckets of money waiting tables in NYC - after getting out of my funk. The summer was terrific. I'm leaving Sydney in a week back to China where I'll follow the Silk Road from Xi'an to Istanbul. And my hair grew back, thank god.

All-in-all, I'd say it's been pretty good. I'm much happier, and doing what I've wanted to do - though when I get home I'll be penniless. Oh, still single.

Yep, I was pretty much OTM.

Just in time for CMJ! unless they go bankrupt...

now i'm working full time for a broadcasting company in N1. i don't have a girlfriend. i live with others in a shared house in North London. i post to ILX and ILM like there's no tomorrow and have done for between 18 months and 2 years.

i haven't taken many risks since that time it seems. but i am now plotting the adventure of my life and it's exciting and terrifying in equal measure. which is progress really.

I life in a flat which is nowhere near as nice as my old house, with people I don't get on as well with. I have made some cool new friends. I am still in the same job, and I wish I wasn't (and am maudlin since I've just found out I haven't got a job I really wanted).

I am meeting a friend tonight who I haven't seen since before this thread was started - that'll be weird. The girlfriend situation might be looking up. All in all, things have stood still a bit, nothing like the explosion of change between March 2002 and March 2003.

In March 2004 I will have a new job, a nice new house with proper friends this time, as opposed to moving in with strangers. I will still probably masochistically revive this thread.

March 2003 was somewhat slightly better. I was living in a different house, I had no boyfriend (just some jerk messing me about) but that was about to change for the better, a shit shit shit job, but my band was ABOUT TO TOUR WITH THE BANGLES!!!

March 2004... no band. Which immediately negates all of the stuff that was good about the previous years. But, a good job, a nice boyfriend and a lovely house. Makes me think, doesn't it?

By March 2005 - I need really to have my own place, and to start getting on with the process of creating things and not worrying about whether they are any good. It's the process that counts.

-- bnw (bweis...), March 14th, 2002 8:00 PM.

i predict i will make another self-effacing remark in two years.

in 2003, i was less happy but still in love.

in 2004, i am miserable, loveless, and homeless.

i think on the 14th march 2004 i was supposed to be at a breakbeat night in brixton, but i didnt go, that was the saturday night, the 13th, as for the sunday, i think i was resting. it was good. i might have even watched amelie that night. that wasnt so good

What a depressing thread.

March 2005: Started a Proper Job (in my chosen field) for the first time in 4 years. Lovelife an utter horrible rancid mess. House tolerable, but getting sick of renting. Social life has ups and downs, but have discovered that the key is to maintain a wide and diverse group of friends. No band. But am having my illustrations/cartoons published in a national magazine for the first time in... well, since I was a kid.

March 2006: Hope to still have same job, maybe even have promotion. Without a doubt, still single. Hope to have bought my own flat. Playing not with a *band* per se, but with a group of friends making music to make us happy. Getting more of my cartoons published definitely a priority. Keep friends I do have, not bothered about fickleness of cliques.

i'm in a different part of London than i was a year ago, in a situation i would not have expected then. seems like a good thing overall.

will you be happier than you are now?

generally yes i am happier as i feel that things are moving, if a bit too slow for my liking. things are pretty good romantically, more or less the same financially and career-wise (despite recent payrise) but it's too bad i still haven't quite figured out what i'm doing with various projects and plans forever on the cards (this time THIS time...), think i am getting closer and closer though, with a big breakthrough coming up, so am very driven if constantly distracted lately.

or will things not be as good?

people never predict things to be bad unless they're already wallowing in self-pity do they? i only WANT things to be good but i don't always expect them to be of course.

will you have taken a risk that you always wanted to take? or still be in the same place?

i took a few and they all seemed to work out really well. i hope it is just the beginning.

March 2005: Living as a full-time Londoner again. Would quite like a marketing job bust stuck in temp hell. Let down by temp agencies constantly. Couple new friends. Sticking close to best friends. New body. New women, more mind games. Still single. Still at home with mother and siblings living fairly dysfunctional family life. Toying with applying to schools in America in order to go and further life. Thinking constantly about travel escape. Probably can't escape far enough. Hoping to raise capital for moving in with friends in September. Buying less music. Buying less everything. Don't know how to take risks or where to drive to.

March 2006: Saved up to flee country, now part of hippie commune somewhere. Tasting the rainbow constantly. Forgotten all and everything. Fell asleep in the funeral fire. Gave my clothes to the policeman.

March 2006: I have a feeling the real explosion of change is just round the corner. Absolutely no idea where I'll be a year down the line, but its going to be fun finding out.

I don't think I was doing anything particularly interesting on 14th March 2005. I think I came home from work and went to Sainsbury's. That was just before the sun came out, wasn't it?

What happened to the kissing time, kate? Did you/they split?

I make no predictions for 2006, it'll probably be okay.

"Whoever practises non-action
Occupies himself with not being occupied"

Overall, I think it's going to be alright!

I was totally going to revive this one on time this year, but then March kinda vanished into broken-leg hell, which maybe serves me right for considering reviving this in the first place - anyway, a couple of weeks late and maybe no-one who posted on this thread in the past is still around, but I'm still going to revive it.

Looking at old emails and apparently on 14 March 2003 I had sent my dissertation to my mother, and there was a riot at my old school where my brother went, apparently because the school wouldn't let them dye their hair red for Comic Relief, the day of laughter.
2004- my fiance won a ROMA INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL award, wow, I'd forgotten about that.
2005- no idea, had found ILX tho and was probably arguing about Nathan Barley.
2006- trying to start a club night
2007- trying to find guest DJs for 1st anniversary of club night
2008- planning first trip to US
2009- planning move to US
2010- in US, fillin out a tax form.
2011- ?? Guess I will still be in US, maybe it will feel like home, I dunno. Really can't predict what I'll be doing next month let alone next year.

Really can't predict what I'll be doing next month let alone next year.

^^^

Any appetite for updates/comparisons whilst we're currently indulging ilx vs nu-ilx nostalgia?

where will you be? will you be happier than you are now? or will things not be as good? will you have taken a risk that you always wanted to take? or still be in the same place?

March 2003: I was really stuck in a rut, working in a job I didn't enjoy and living paycheck to paycheck. After some years of not going abroad, I was beginning to put one 'big holiday' a year (e.g. Hong Kong, New York) on the credit card and pay it off over the year. I was 38 and really feeling kind of old and lost. I had just started lurking irregularly on ILE and was intimidated by how young everyone seemed and how their lives seemed more interesting. Similarly at work I was intimidated by the confidence of young people in their 20s. Weekends were particularly dire. I was going out to gay clubs at weekends and drinking heavily, and otherwise staying in and being miserable.

March 2019: Still in kind of a rut workwise, but far more solvent. Had a really bad episode of group harassment at last year, which made me focus on developing more resilience - and I'm probably in far fitter shape physically and mentally than in 2003. Weekends are far more enjoyable and productive. Off to Japan on holiday in May. Still single. Beginning to do the retirement maths, calculating when I can give up work - though it still seems a long way away. Still lurking far more than I post.

14 March 2003 was my 18th birthday. I was older than most of my friends so I couldn't really celebrate by going to a bar. I went home early from school and asked my mom to come with me to do the next obvious adult thing and go to a casino. We won $15 on slot machines. I was disappointed that the casino wasn't as glamorous as the ones in movies.

This year I went to work, filled up on cupcakes from colleagues, then went out for dinner and filled up on beyti.