like most cynics, i don't make new years resolutions.

it's not that i don't make them because i can't keep them. i don't make them because i make "resolutions" all year round. for instance, my current running list consists of:

1. give unnamed source the silent treatment
2. call lax occasionally
3. say thank you to my parents more often
4. lose weight
5. go to synagogue to pray for grad school acceptances

sometimes, i think the hardest thing about growing up is that there is more we are expected to do. more expectations we aspire to live up to. and a whole lot more transgressions to be sorry for. (or in some cases, pretend to be sorry for).

which i suppose is why people feel the need to make new year's resolutions. ha.

i was lucky enough to take off some time (at this job, i actually have what the rest of the world calls vacation days. not take-off-a-day-when-you-need-to-but-we're-going-to-make-
you-feel-guilty-about-it-anyway days) between the american holidays of christmas and new years to venture to the drama capital of the world: miami. i don't necessary have good stories to report. in between the south beach rendezvous, the poker tournament, the 102 fever, the ring buying fiasco, the $1000 bar tab, the overdrawn checkbook, and the pending-all-out-fist-fight in a bar that i actually saved from inception, it was quite uneventful.

while sitting at a chinese restaurant on christmas eve, i realized that this december/january actually marks a decade since i met The Boys. who single-handedly changed my life. without them, i'd probably have some drug addiction and four illegitimate children.

come to think of it, my drug addiction and four illegitimate children might be a direct result of my friendship with them. oh well.

i'm not sure when we stopped being hormonally driven teenagers who stand in parking lots arguing about what we're going to do and started being hormonally driven twenty-somethings who stand it parking lots arguing about what we're going to do.

but the issue that strikes me most every time i go home is the undeniable balance between acting my age and feeling like half of it. granted, it's an equilibrium i struggle with everyday of my life, but somehow, sleeping in your childhood bed makes it okay to not wear makeup. and to skip. and to sing in the shower (loudly).

and it all folds up into anal-retentiveness the moment i step off the plane back in washington.

and so here i am venturing into a new year where it is quite plausible that 365 days from now, the anxiety and perpetual fear caused by grad school applications and letters of rejection will melt into anxiety and perpetual fear of talking outloud in class and law school/business school finals.

at this time next year, i will have made life changing decisions including where i will spend the next four (plus?) years of my life and will already know my grad school network of contacts.

at this time next year, i will have failed miserably (at perhaps just one thing. but probably a whole lot more.)

at this time next year, i will have let someone down (hopefully just one person. but probably a whole lot more.)

at this time next year, i will have said something stupid (we can only hope just one thing. but probably a whole lot more).

at this time next year, i will have not lived up to the unattainable expectations that the world holds for me.

i'll just aim to start a business, publish a book, blog more often, and learn to drive stick shift. all in the next 6 months, obviously.

which is why i don't make new years resolutions. if you don't set the bar so high, the disappointment is a whole lot less disheartening.

i think josh isaacs once said the same thing about his friends.