RESOLVE!

Alright. Time for some self-awareness, is it? I mean, I like zipping through life without any conception of my own self like some sort of... gazelle, I guess. I like that as much as the next guy, but heck, I ain't no gazelle, so I can't go acting like one.

Which is a shame, as I've always enjoyed eating grass and being killed by lions.

It's been a big year, hasn't it? (Answer: Yes). I dropped out of advertising into English, I got an apartment of my own, I got the first real job I've had since high school and I quit it in a fit of fully-justified rage, I published my first novel and I started my second, I finally sought councelling for my myriad brain problems, I beat a Super Mario Brothers game for the first time in my life, I discovered that Amber is a real person and not so much a figment of my imagination, I learned how to navigate the New York City subway system, I cooked delicious French Toast, and that's just all the stuff I'm comfortable talking about on the Internet. It has been a big year, and I should be damn proud of how I've done. Should be, and am! Bravo, me!

T'aint been a perfect year. Not by a long shot; holes in my closet door notwithstanding, I've made a few people mad at me, I've done some things I regret and not done some things I regret not doing, and were I to compile a list of things I would resolve to change, item by item, it would be a mile long and the first item would be "Be somebody else entirely". Not especially helpful... the more demands I make on myself the less likely I am to be able to follow through on those demands. On the other hand, making a few vague demands won't cut it either, because, in the end, what does "Be a better person" even mean? At the end of the year, I'll have no idea whether I did it or not. I could resolve to lose weight, which has the advantage of success or failure being determinable as concrete numbers on a scale... but looking back on all the negative moments in this last year, my weight was never the problem, so why should I tackle that resolutionarily? Don't make no sense. All my problems had to do with, well, backsliding into the depressive Ed of yesteryear.

My new year's resolution, then, is a simple one. "Keep it up". All the good that has happened to me happened because I'm progressing as a person, attempting to be more in control of myself and more in touch with my emotions, but goodness is it ever easy to backslide (and in these last few weeks, I backslid heavily). And the big problem is, when you're sad, it's easy to get more sad and when you're angry, it's easy to get more angry, and it's pretty easy to switch between the two, but in both cases it's damn hard to pull out from the spiral altogether. But I'm not going to let those spirals discourage me. Maybe it's silly to have a resolution that is, essentially, to do nothing different. But that's what I need to be doing; New Year's isn't a time to force changes one doesn't want or need, it's just a time to reflect and consider, and such I have done. Happy 2007, y'all.