welcome to your year

Happy New Year!

I don't really celebrate on new year's eve because I'm always in NC and it's always...quiet. A bit isolating. I love my family, but we're not exactly the type to party and drink in celebration. I would do it with friends, but really I have no close friends here except A, and she has her own circle of close friends here because they live here year-round. I just visit. So I usually have a quiet new year's eve, but it's all right. New years tend to depress me a little bit because they remind me of the wasted opportunities in the past year and all that bright shining hope in the new year - that usually ends in disappointment by the end. Because I am still not as proactive and carpe diem as I should be.

But let's not get into that! I had a good day yesterday - I went to visit A in the afternoon in Apex and we hung out. She had a late lunch at Panera while I clasped a vanilla latte to my chest in the raptures of the addicted, and then we whiled the hours away at Borders.

Every time I visit Borders, I wander past the YA shelves and am aghast. Rows and rows of black-bound books with fancy colored font, all about vampires and werewolves and supernatural romances. Those that aren't are about rich boarding schools and fancy parties with lots of drama. And what remains is all historical fiction (i.e., RPF AU or spin-offs of Jane Austen and her works). Apparently, boys have nothing to read. Slim pickings include zombies and GI Joe novelizations. I am left more determined than ever to write a new best-selling YA series involving a prestigious boarding school full of rich girls in pretty dresses having drama about their supernatural boyfriends: vampires, werewolves, leprechauns, centaurs, god knows what else. Yes, it will be highly successful, can't you tell.

Anyway, after leaving Borders, I returned with A to her house and helped make dumplings. Handmade, homemade, etc. The best way to do dumplings, because the frozen stuff does not compare - and I'd know. I ate so many frozen dumplings surviving the last few weeks of school/exams.

Insert thoughts here reflecting on the differences between her family and mine, but they are not bad differences - they are merely differences.

But that is for another time. For now, a new year. Let's be optimistic! My resolutions for 2011 are:

-Have fun in Singapore.
-Be proactive about what I want to do post-graduation.
-Write something original of significant length.
-Be grateful.
-Be happy.