5-4-3-2...(Cr)appy New Year!

So...January is coming around the corner like an ambulance pursuing a 10-car pileup and I can't say I'm very happy about it. Because, 2009 is not done providing me with the opportunities that I was convinced I'd have before the year ended. As a matter of fact, 2009 hasn't delivered in a lot of areas. I thought I'd be a millionaire by now with Iman's body and a wine-red Range Rover ;-)

I don't know about anyone else but I don't want to start another year with the same damn resolutions. I don't want to get a new gym membership on the 2nd of January and end up using it twice, then cursing out the gym's bill collectors on the 22nd of March. I don't want to plan to have the perfect relationship with no bruises and blunders. I'm not interested in trying to lose 1,000 pounds by eating lemons and drinking 20 cups of water by noon each day. Most importantly, I don't want to force my dreams to take flight just so I won't have to endure the process of life and avoid working for "the man" for just one more year.

Every January, I make huge-unrealistic plans for the upcoming year and every October..I end up looking back at the year that was supposed to change everything with animosity and regret. I make a potentially happy new year into a crappy new year by trying to turn my entire life around in 12 months. It's sincerely absurd. The truth is, I am probably going to be in a very similar place 1 year from now. I don't anticipate that the sky is going to open up and drop 3 million dollars through the sun roof of my Passat. I am not going to be able to attend one weekend seminar and earn my master's. I won't be able to melt 600 pounds away in a magical sauna. None of those things will ever happen to me. But I know what WILL happen if I continue to make these unrealistic goals. I will die before 2011 peaks its head out next winter.

When it really comes down to it, there isn't much to make resolutions about. I know who I am and I just want to be a writer. All this other fancy shit is giving me wrinkles. I don't want to plan to take over the world. I don't want to make a timeline to be just like Oprah. I just want to be 23 years old for as long as I can. I want to read by the lake on Tuesday mornings. I want to listen to Kanye while I endure my morning work-outs. I want to meet people and collaborate on wonderful, inspiring projects. But I don't really want to exhaust myself with the burden of networking beyond necessity. I don't want to plan to go to church more or take vitamins every morning or visit my parents once a week.

I just wanna throw my shot glass in the air at 12am on January 1st and commit to never having another anxiety-inducing, crappy New Year again. My only resolution this January will be: to live more and obsess less.