I don't believe I gave permission for it to suddenly be 2009.

I graduated high school in 2003, for heaven's sake. That means it'll soon be 6 years since I left. And it's not like that's so much scarier than 5 years, and it's not like I've spent all that time twiddling my thumbs. But still. It alarmed me for some reason, and I thought I would share.

My New Year's resolution is the same one it's been for quite a few years now - not to turn into my mother. I realize that, as a size 10/12 woman, society requires me to resolve to reduce the size of my ass, but this is way more important. You see, there is probably no one in the world besides me who will ever care how big my ass is, what with my being permanently and happily single, but this means I will spend the rest of my life fending for myself, and in that case I cannot afford to turn into my mother. She is, despite her master's degree, service in the Peace Corps, and subscription to Ms., the most helpless and dependent woman I know. I love her, but she cannot do a thing for herself. When confronted with a task, she will stand there helplessly until someone, usually my dad or myself, becomes exasperated and does it for her. She was single until she met my dad just before she turned 30, and if she was as bad in her 20's as she is now, I have no idea how she managed to survive them.

Also, she does not use or understand sarcasm. The thought of living in a sarcasm-free world simply blows my mind. It would be like losing my soul. (Yes, she does have a crush on House. I have no idea how.) So: I will not turn into my mother this year. Or the next. Or ever.

And on a less crucial note - I used to do daily updates in my old journal. I was thinking I might try going back to doing that, because clearly this "update when I have something interesting to say" thing is just not working out. It means I have to wait around until I come up with something that I feel is worthy, and that means that I don't write nearly as much as I should. Sure, daily updates meant I was sometimes reduced to talking about the state of my fingernails, but at least I was writing something, and the whole point of keeping this thing is so that I can continue to get over my teeth-grinding hatred of writing and consequently do better on papers. (This has been backfiring somewhat because I am still no good at formal writing, but at least it means I can write faster than my old rate of 2 hours per page.) I don't ask for comments here because I don't think I have many readers (there are only about 2 that I know about, and I don't use a site tracker because I think they're creepy) but if you would prefer daily, but probably more boring, updates, let me know.

Finally - I stopped using tags quite some time ago because I felt they were completely pointless. Having heard no complaints (possibly because all my writing disappears into the Void of Echoing Silence), I'm going to continue to leave them off.