Starting Fresh

Here it is, after 1:00 in the morning. We are now three days (although, technically 4) into the New Year. I’ve had an out-of-town friend staying with me for the past week, so I’ve been a bit lax about my self-betterment. However, after dropping her off at the airport this afternoon, I rushed home to start knocking items off my To Do list (work and school start up again in 5 days…I need to get down to business!)

In the midst of washing all the clothes in my overflowing laundry basket, I sat down to begin work in one area of this year’s self-betterment: journaling.

This year, one of my resolutions is to journal at least three times a week. I have found that doing this is bittersweet. Just today, I went through my journals from the past few years in Europe. At the start of 2009, I was in Mosbach, Germany, making friends, eating weiner snitzel, feeling that nothing could ever go wrong with life. At the start of 2010, my parents were over visiting in France, and my dad unexpectedly suffered a stroke. S and I welcomed in the New Year sipping cups of soup in the waiting room of St. Anne’s Hospital in Paris while we read each other excerpts of Isaac Babel stories. And last year, S and I had flown to the US together, and he met everyone in my family for the first time. We had made the New Year’s resolution to get married in 2011.

And now, here it is, 2012, and I sat shivering in my cold apartment, because another resolution I have is to spend less money this year. The handwriting inside my journal looked cramped and messy as a result of my spasming hand (the thermostat told me the apartment was 60°), and I sat in my winter coat and boots and told myself this is probably what Dickens did once in a while. Money, as we know, doesn’t grow on trees.

I’ve been told that people who journal are generally less depressed—that they are in touch with their feelings and are better able to process their hurts.

I would love this to be true of me.

So, there I went. I wrote and wrote and processed and processed.

And here’s my conclusion on this third day (technically forth) of January.

I’m starting fresh.

And not only am I starting fresh, 2012 will not disappoint me the way 2011 did. I refuse to let it.

I’m starting out this year single, so chances are, I won’t have to cancel another wedding this year.

Not only that, I can work toward a whole host of things this year: sending articles off for publication, running two half-marathons, enjoying that one meaningless date.

It’s going to be a good year.

I won’t settle for anything less.

So, here’s to starting fresh!