Obligatory New Year's Post

[laleia]

It's an hour and a half to the new year, and I'm alone in my bedroom.

But I like it this way. I like it when New Years' are an introspective moment, for me to psych myself up to the new year and try to convince myself that this time, I will do amazing things and be amazing. (Not that I haven't had amazing years, it's just that I rarely possess the strength of will to maintain any good habits I may develop.)

I've had to opportunities to hang out with people, but I didn't want to go drinking with people I don't know (which would be a difficult task since I don't drink alcohol), or eat dinner with someone and their friend, and impose on their rapport. (You have no idea how it long it took me to think up the word "impose." I was like "im... in .... intrude? No, what's that word again?")

I'm introverted by nature, and I like to think that my cell phone charger malfunctioning (which, I will proceed to be INCREASINGLY stressed about if it is irreplaceable, expensive to replace, or it turns out that it's my cell phone that's broken and not just the charger) is a sign that I don't have to force myself to go out this one time.

(Generally, I believe in expanding my horizons and will make plans with people and meet new people ish, but it never hurts to be introspective now and again.)

Instead, I mean to (and really, so many of my statements each new year start with that ... "I mean to brush up on my foreign language skills; I mean to exercise; I mean to write more; I mean to read more") completely clean my room (which is a MESS), cook myself a delicious dinner to welcome the new year at about midnight (Psh, sleep? What is that?), and start off the new year with new beginnings.

New Years' Resolutions are infamous for being broken within days. (I always try twice each year -- when new year's resolutions fail, I try to make new ones for Chinese New Years.) My best New Year's Resolutions are the ones where I wish for each year to be better than the last. Which, I do hope that 2011 holds more than 2010, but part of that is not within my control.

As for what is in my control, I resolve for not just the year of 2011, but hopefully for he remainder of my life:

Primarily, to have fun.
Secondarily, to work hard.

It works neatly for 2011, because I'll spend the first half of the year swanning about abroad, exploring, discovering, lounging about in a lazy fashion.

Then the second half I get to start law school, where discipline, hard work, the ability to wade through dry legal documents without following asleep -- these become most important. My sincerest hope is that I get to experience all I wish to in the first half of the year so that I don't regret having wasted my time here, and to work as hard as I need to the second half of the year, so I don't regret having wasted my time there.

The hard work doesn't stop there, though. I shudder sometimes when I think life marching on before me -- 3 years toiling away at law school, followed by anywhere from 3-10 years toiling away (hopefully!) at a high-paying law firm that wrings me dry of my time and my energy, followed by what? More years of work, until I either die of a heart attack or I retire?

Fortunately, life rarely turns out as bleak as I imagine it.

(Have I told you that my senior year of high school, every night before I slept, I used to envisage terrifying scenarios for my future? In one, I failed college, disgraced my family, and ended up working as a janitor somewhere for the rest of my life, disowned by my parents. In another, where I worried about my introverted nature, I imagined the consequences of not making friends in college, going through life friendless, going through my future career friendless and sad and alone, and doing one of those crazy-cat-lady deaths where I die but nobody notices until my neighbors start complaining of the smell. I have a very active imagination.)

And because I am an adventuresome sort who loves to travel (I never really thought of myself as adventuresome before I met boring people who prefer to eat steak every night on a cruise rather than trying new things, and met people while teaching abroad who have come to realize they prefer to put down roots in one city and stay there forever -- whereas my ideal future right now is one that changes every few years as I move to a new city and do new things), that will most certainly affect my future.

Whatever I do for the next 10 or 20 years, no matter how much I love or hate my job, no matter how much I change, I imagine that I'll still be adventuresome underneath.

I'll still apply for the foreign service every year, plan on doing Peace Corps after I retire, make it a life goal to live in Paris for a year at some point in my life. I'll still travel over my vacations and have friends abroad to visit.

And fortunately my primary hobby (writing) is something that I can do anywhere. On the subway to and from work, scribbling on a notepad during lunch, thinking up new universes as I lay in bed at night. I can't think that my imagination will ever abandon me, and as long as I have my imagination, it shouldn't be too difficult for me to have fun.

So, not just New Year's Resolutions, but Life Resolutions: Have Fun, Work Hard, (with I suppose a side order of No Regrets).

Happy New Year.