1. Stop freaking out about everything. Seriously. I need to take a chill pill. I don’t even remember how many times over the past year that I’ve had a panic attack about something. I need to just breathe and take everything one step at a time.
2. Remove the stick from my ass. Unwind a little bit. I really need to stop being so uptight about everything. This kind of goes along with the first resolution. Maybe I should take a meditation class or something like that. Or yoga.
3. Quit being all ADD. I took like five online personality tests to determine whether or not I actually have ADD and pretty much every single one was like, “You are psycho, go get help immediately.” Anybody who knows me really well can attest to the fact that I can hardly pay attention to anything. I forget people’s names that I should definitely remember, I awake from a daydream only to find that somebody has been having a conversation with me for the past ten minutes, I can’t finish books EVER, and I find it almost physically painful to sit down and study. My attention deficit problems weren’t really that bad in art school (in fact, they may have been a good thing in that setting), but because I’ve made the decision to transfer once and for all (hopefully) to real school, I think it would be wise to finally nail this ADD thing.
4. Do things. ANYTHING. For the past semester, more often than not, I was holed up in my apartment twiddling my thumbs or sleeping. This is probably due to the fact that my school schedule was absolutely retarded and by the time I had time to do anything, I was just too tired. Also, having zero money doesn’t help, either. Whenever my friends were going out to dinner, I’d have to be like, “uh…. I have some leftovers at home that are just screaming my name. But you guys go ahead.” It’s gross. So, I guess this brings me to resolution five….
5. GET A JOB.
6. Stop being a ridiculously passive doormat with an obsessive need to please people. I think I care way too much about what people think of me and as a result, I try way too hard to get people to like me, even if I really don’t even care that much. Because of this, I also have a huge problem with confrontation. If something is bugging me, I generally just obsess about it inside my head and say nothing about it to the other person. It’s a problem.
7. Keep a journal. I started a journal (the physical paper and pen kind) over the summer and I found it very therapeutic. This is kind of just a resolution to continue writing in it.
8. Lay in the park more. One of the best things about my neighborhood is the park that’s just a few blocks from my home. If there’s one thing I wish I had done more over the summer, it’s laying in the park and just relaxing.
9. Get the oven fixed. I have a Kitchen-Aid Mixer and a ton of baking supplies, but I have yet to bake anything owing to the fact that the oven is broken.
10. Use the oven.
11. Cook new things. As I mentioned in the previous entry, I recently bought new cookbooks and subscribed to the Martha Stewart food magazine. Still, I have yet to expand my culinary repertoire. I want to make some kind of plan to try out different recipes. Perhaps I’ll make something new from one of my cookbooks every week.
12. Get an internship. Because I’ve essentially left art school but still have a desire for a career in the arts (I hope that wasn’t a huge mistake), I feel like the best thing to do is to get an awesome internship. Right now, I’m eyeing a summer internship at Martha Stewart Living.
13. Get a driver’s license. Or a permit, for that matter. When I was sixteen and didn’t have a license, it was alright. Now that I’m going to be twenty-one this year, when I tell people that I have absolutely no idea how to drive, they think I’m kidding. I’m not. I couldn’t even tell you how to properly start a car. I feel like the more I delay learning, the worse I will actually be when I do get around to it. I should probably learn soon.
14. Go on a trip away from the city. After living in New York City for about three years now, I now know exactly how people feel when they say “I need to get out of the city for a few days” because that is how I feel every day. It’s seriously exhausting! When I leave the city to come home, as soon as I cross the city border, my muscles immediately relax and I finally feel at ease. New York keeps me in a constant state of on-edgedness. I want to grab a few friends, hop on a train and go into the forest for a day.
15. Take more pictures. I think my photographic output this year has diminished partly because I broke my little point-and-shoot camera last February. While my DSLR is obviously better in terms of quality, it is a huge hassle to carry it around with me all the time. I feel like one reason that I didn’t do as much this year is because the photographer gene in me wants to document every single second of my life and when I am unable to do that, I just think, why bother? I need to get my mini camera fixed and carry it around with me at all times.
16. Think positively and make 2009 a fantastic year!