hello, 2009. it's nice to meet you.

so the other night N. and i were over at my bff's amazing new house with her new husband and my other bff, and we were having a sort of wrap-up of 2008 discussion. across the board, this has been a pretty bad year for most people i know. and my bff started talking about how it should have been a great year for us since we're the year of the rat and all (she's been finding out more about her chinese ancestry since she's been working on a genealogy project for grad school for the passed 2 months), but since that hasn't happened, maybe it'll roll over to 2009. she's prepared to do various things to ensure that this goes through (which many people, my grandmother for example, do), including cleaning her house from top to bottom before last night, setting off certain fireworks from the four corners of her roof at midnight, making the proper offerings of money or incense (?), and receiving licee, etc. i don't know a thing about any of this (though N. does since he's half chinese as well), but she said she'd include thoughts and hopes for my 2009 into her rituals, i'm not arguing.

my rituals, on the other hand, are slightly different from hers. i don't actually think i have any, come to think of it. originally, N. and i had planned to do a whole new years things with friends last night, but plans changed since we missed our flight back from hawaii on the 30th and ended up getting back to oakland at 10pm last night instead. it was silly, really. we didn't miss our flight for any huge reason; we were sitting at burger king in the interisland terminal chatting away before we realized that our flight was taking off. so we rebooked our flight for last night and ended up calling my older sister to come and get us so we could stay with her for the night. which actually worked out amazingly well, since it allowed me to FINALLY meet my new niece, and hang out with my nephew. not to mention that big sis let us borrow her truck for the afternoon, so N. and i just drove around to beaches, got something to eat, and hung out.

there are worse places to be stuck on a layover.

but since we got back so late last night, i wasn't in the mood to jump off of a 5 and a half hour plane ride and go straight to a party. so instead we just hung out at home, which was fine with me.

i have made some resolutions, however. i'm trying not to make them too overly ambitious since no one ever ends up keeping those resolutions, so they may not be too interesting.

1. join a gym. notice that for once it doesn't say, "lose weight." i never keep that resolution. this one is a bit more baby-step-ish, so i feel better about it. there's a gym i have in mind that i'm going to check out next week. and yes, the joining does entail actually going to the gym. i purposefully set up my class schedule so that it allows for more "me time" this semester, which includes exercising, so i think i'm headed in the right direction.
2. write. this one excites me. it's purely meant to be writing for pleasure. not publication, not academia, just for fun. whether anyone will ever read it doesn't really matter. i need to write again.
3. get out of credit card debt. for more on this, see "confessions of a shopaholic" post.
   
4. not make myself sick over what may happen after graduation. my problem has always been that i need a plan to the point where i make myself suffer if i don't. this is the first time in my life that a huge life change is coming up (graduation in may), and i have absolutely no idea where i'm going to be after it. currently, i have the possibility of a job i may want lined up, and the ability to apply for other jobs i probably don't want at my fingertips. it's the first time i don't know what i really want though, and normally, this would make me sick to the point where i wouldn't be able to function. but i'm working on not letting my ocd tendencies get the better of me. things will work out. things will work out. things will work out.
5. be happy. this one ties in to the last one and is probably the biggest and most important of my resolutions. while i didn't have control over a lot of what happened in 2008, i did have control over my reactions to those things, and in the end, it's those reactions that paved the way for how the year would proceed. so my only conclusions can be that i made myself unhappy this year. i made 2008 difficult for myself. and i refuse to do that in 2009. whatever else happens, i want to approach my decisions, big or small, with the goal of being happy. should i take the bar? well, would it make me happy to do so? should i apply for this job? well, would i be happy if i was offered the job and accepted? it may sound selfish, and i'll try not to be, but i just feel like this is a much better approach, and a sort of middle ground, to how i usually go about doing things. we'll see how it turned out, i guess, on december 31st, 2009.

anyhow, there it is. there are more mini-resolutions that i'm not going in to detail about (blog more regularly, read more frequently and eclectically, go to shows again, finish publishing my article, travel out of the country), but i think those are the biggies.

oh, also, i'm going to be working on a new blog layout over the next couple of days, and will probably be shifting over to wordpress, but i'll keep you posted.

stuff to come:

• flickr
• review of "the reincarnationist" by m.j. rose