Happy new year! I'm currently stranded in the middle of the country with my parents (and older sibling) rather than in my cute little apartment, like I was supposed to be. Unfortunately, I have COVID. In kind of a funny coincidence, both my siblings and I have COVID. I got it from my older sibling, who got it from living in New York City, and our little sister got it from somebody else, seeing as she's halfway across the country from us, living and working on a sailing yacht in the Atlantic Ocean, currently (or maybe soon to be) off the coast of Florida. I know, I know, she sounds far more interesting than I. That's unfortunate truth is not lost on me, and yet here you are, reading my online journal. How unfortunate. I would like to think that, although my life is far less exciting, I might still be more interesting to talk to than she is. But maybe that's wishful thinking, as I've never been a third party talking to both of us and have never been anybody but myself at all. Regardless, all this is to say that it's funny that my parents have three sick kids and may or may not be sick themselves. And that I am stranded in Utah rather than being able to get back to Seattle in any timely manner. I've got another week and a half to go.
In theory, this post is meant as a way to present to you my new year's resolutions and to try to hold myself accountable. I often come up with my new year's resolutions a bit after the first, but I've already come up with three and three feels like just about as much of a bite as I can chew, so I'm going to stick with these three for the time being.
- Read more. Specifically, read at least 40 pages of a book every day. This doesn't sound like all that much, but I've fallen out of the habit of reading and starting small is a good way to start getting back into it. If I read 40 pages a day, that's 1200 pages a month. Assuming that a book is somewhere between 300-600 pages long and that I mostly finish the books I start, I can safely assume I'll read 2-3 books a month. That comes out to around 25-35 books in the year and, well, that's far more than I read for pleasure when I was in college. I'm realizing right now, I might not let it apply on Thursdays, as I'm only home for about an hour between things outside of time spent getting ready for work and getting ready for bed. I'm too lazy to do all the math over, but it comes out to about 20-30 books overall.
- Talk to (at least) one new person every week and hang out with (at least) one new person every month. When meeting the new person, it doesn't matter if they're a friend of a friend, a person from a dating app (should I get back onto one of those), somebody I meet at a bar, or the person in front of me in line at the grocery store. I just need to talk to somebody, face to face, for at least ten minutes uninterrupted.
- Unlike the first two, this one's a restrictive one. No going on social media before 10 am. And I need to take at least one day a week off entirely from social media (no scrolling, if important I can respond to people's direct messages). In particular, I'm trying to use twitter less. I find that I feel like a very two-dimensional person sometimes because of all the time spend on my phone and, in particular, on twitter. Just because my online friends live in my cellphone doesn't mean I need to, too.
That's all. Those are the three things. I've been pretty good about new year's resolutions in the past, but they need to be things I'm already leaning towards or have a bit of a head start on but probably wouldn't do without the final push of the resolution. For example, I've already read more for pleasure since graduating from college than I think I did any year (or maybe two, or three, or the entire time) I was in college. Again, I didn't do it much, but when you take into account that I didn't start until June and then read one book before spending the rest of the summer too sad to read, I think I did a decent job. Some of my previous resolutions have been to kiss one new person every month (this was in 2017 because I was afraid of going to college an inexperienced kisser, or perhaps just too nervous to ever take the opportunities when they arose... it became far less significant after I had sex for the first time that May and then the next day started dating somebody, though not the same somebody... it was quite an eventful night that prompted both of those things), to take a year off from buying any brand new clothes (I'm not sure exactly when I made this resolution, I don't think it was explicitly a new year's resolution, but it would've been sometime between the later half of 2016 and early 2018 when I discovered how bad the fashion industry is for the environment and swore I wouldn't contribute to that destruction and would buy everything secondhand, though there was of course an exception made for undergarments), and to entirely stop watching TV except on weekends with other people or during school breaks, unrestricted (I believe this one was at the beginning of my sophomore year of high school, and I kept it in place for the most part until the pandemic, when TV became a more regular activity for me and my ex-boyfriend because we were living together and really didn't have all that much to do or talk about at the end of each and every long day spent together, just the two of us). And so, based on my previous successes, I trust that I'll be able to keep these ones relatively well.
Also, a side note, I've decided it was silly of me to hide where I live on here. I still won't be using people's names without their permission because that's rude, but it's so unlikely that anybody I don't already know will find me on here that I've decided I can share more about myself. Plus, Seattle is a big enough city that anybody who finds just this blog with only my first name and a three year old blurry photo of myself likely won't ever find me. And if they were to stalk me enough to find me, they almost certainly would've been able to do that anyway. Not entirely sure why that felt like something I ought to share, but it did.
Until next time!
