My Dear Acquaintance

New Year's is my favorite time of year. As cheesy as it sounds, I like the idea of starting over as soon as the clock chimes midnight, and I love the idea of New Years Resolutions. I make them every year, and while oftentimes I lose track of them after February, there have been a few important ones that I've kept the whole year and into the rest of my life. I don't do New Year's Resolutions like everyone else, though (because I'm a hipster, duh). My resolutions are never "I'm going to lose 10 pounds by Memorial Day" or "I'm going to stop drinking caffeine." My resolutions usually have something to do with expanding my creative base, or updating the way that I view the world, or ceasing to be so afraid all the time.

This year, I have four resolutions: 

1. Cross off four things from The Bucket List

2. Finish editing one of the last two National Novel Writing Month novels I've done. 

3. Keep a book of one wonderful thing happened each day (with a physical reminder) - something to be thankful for. 

4. Keep a 2012 box (This is something I did this year, too. I have a green 'photo box' that I bought from Target at the beginning of the year, and as the year has gone on, I've filled it with ticket stubs and letters and physical reminders of things that have been wonderful in my life. And now I can go back and look through that box and see how my life progressed). 

I'm hoping to cross of some of my Bucket List items while I'm abroad in the fall - I have plans to travel to Florence, Rome, and Venice while I'm in Italy, but I'm also hoping I can visit Greece and Austria, too. I am so excited for my study abroad trip, and I just hope that it works out as I intend for it to work. 

This year I'm also hoping to re-evaluate some of the relationships in my life. While this semester, I felt like I really needed to hold on to a lot of my high school friends, I am starting to wonder whether or not this is the time to start letting them go. We've become very different people, and we've started to want very different things. I'm not saying I want to abandon them entirely - I'm just saying maybe it's time to ease up a bit on the friendships I used to have, and start to look forward. 

Finally, this year I'm hoping to become better friends with the people I've been seeing during Friendsgiving and Friendsmas. I've known most of these guys since high school, but I wasn't friends with most of them, and we definitely weren't close. But now I've started attending these events, and getting to know them better and I think the relationships and friendships they have to offer could be really beneficial. From what I've seen, their friendships are based completely on selflessness and mutual respect. They support one another entirely in their respective endeavors, and they respect the talents each of them owns for themselves. They tease each other and they wrestle each other and they're clearly grateful for one another - to be invited to join in with that group is sort of a small honor. They make me want to better my own friendships and find people who want that kind of friendship with me. The atmosphere they create is very open and very loving. There was never I time I felt like they weren't trying to make me feel more welcome. So if I can be a part of that for even a moment...I'll take it!

I hope your New Year's is wonderful and full of new resolutions and new ideas. Now is the time to re-invent the pieces of our lives that are messy. I plan to embrace it 100%. 

Happy New Year!

December, I Will Carry You Home

December.

Winter, I'm so glad you're back. I've missed you terribly. November was wonderful, of course, as November always is. But nothing beats walking outside in the morning and just smelling the impending snow. It's the greatest.

As for an update, November was National Novel Writing Month, and I successfully completed the challenge with a grand total of 54,311 words. That's a pretty productive November, I'd say. I'm so thrilled to be finished and have a new manuscript to look at and edit and play around with. Did I mention how much I love November?

And now it's December, and yesterday it snowed. I took a walk in the first snow of the season and hung out with some friends on my floor and just in general had a really fantastic day. Today I'll be spending the majority of my time either hunkered down in Panera, studying, or at Kimball Recital Hall because today is our big holiday concert at the university. Hopefully it'll be a great day - who doesn't love Christmas music?

Some things I'm loving this week: 

1. Michael Buble's new Christmas album, particularly this song:

2. My planner. This upcoming week is Dead Week and then I have my first college finals. Somewhere back in mid-November I planned out every single class on every single day so I knew exactly what I needed to get done in order to not fail my finals. So I'm sort of clutching my planner to my chest no matter where I go. 

3. Twitter! I just recently got one and I am sort of addicted. When you follow the Kardashian sisters, you learn all sorts of fun things.

4. This was back from November, but the memories still make me smile. I was invited to "Friendsgiving" this year with some of my friends from high school, and it was just the greatest time. We all got together at one house and ate a meal, and one of the guys wrote a play about the 'origins of Thanksgiving' and we had a ceremony for Mr. and Mrs. Friendsgiving. And then we all went back to Cory's house, where he had built a gigantic fort/'wigwam' in his basement. Then, we all watched this movie: 

Friendsgiving was probably the best part of my November. 

5. My mother, who keeps letting me come home and do my laundry and eat all of her food. I'm just extra thankful for her this week. 

Hope your December has started off as magically as mine has!