2019

It has been, once again, a year. Depending on who I'm talking to, how much work I have, how drunk I am and what time of the month it is, my feelings about it vary from, "holy hell, I've come far and this has been pretty great, all things considered" to, "what am I doing with my life, why am I here and will I ever be happy?"

So basically, same as always.

When I'm emo, I always forget how emo I've always been - my most immediate crisis always feels like the most important one I have ever experienced, and so I am always taken aback by the intensity of emotion when I stumble across old diaries and notebooks and word documents, as I recently did. And boy, has my internal airbrush been on fire this year. Pages and pages have been filled with me questioning every decision, wondering when I'll just pick a team (literally and figuratively), when I'll shut up and stop being such an emo fuck, when I'll learn to be content and happy, conveniently forgetting that I've been an emo dissatisfied fuck since at least 2004, long, long before any of my current life crises had ever raised their heads.

Given how much of the year I've spent combatting struggles inside my head, I seriously considered making 2019 the year in which I give up and just embrace the emo, wallow in them feels and stop even attempting to rediscover the light happy chirpy bunny I'm convinced I once used to be. I considered going emo max, but the truth is, I think we all know that I've been there, done that, and written a book on it. So no more embracing the emo for me, at least about Big Life Decisions.

Instead, I want to make 2019 about things that I know make me happy, things I know I love, even if it's something I struggle to remind myself of in the daily grind of life. And because we all know what a basic bitch I am, say hello to the most cliched resolutions of all time:

Primary Resolutions:

1. Run: I love running when I'm running; hate it when I'm snuggled up warmly in bed. The aim for 2019 is to remember the feeling I have when I'm running, and try to feel it as often as possible. For once, I want to prioritise fitness over dessert, and see what it feels like to have the body you want. This is not something I'm very good at consistently wanting, though (cake, guys, cake), which is why the resolution isn't to get hot - just to run, to feel the blood pumping through my body, to feel the rush of endorphins to my brain and to use my body for something other than getting in and out of cabs and office chairs. 
2. Write (Part 1): There is a story that's been festering in my mind since 2005-6, that's gone through enough iterations to be unrecognizable from its original self (thankfully, since I've grown up considerably since then), but that it's time to actually put down on paper. Something I've always meant to attempt is NaNoWriMo, a challenge where you're supposed to write 50,000 words in a month. That seems near-impossible as my life is right now, though I still hope to one day do it. In 2019, however, I want to write those 50,000 words over the course of the year. That comes to about 1,000 words every weekend, which, while ambitious, is something I should've started doing a long, long time ago. 
3. Connect: Something that's consistently characterized my life in this city is loneliness. My closest friends and family are far away from me, and the friends around me are as isolated and absorbed in their jobs and lives as I am in mine. Making new friends has never been a forte of mine; I don't remember ever taking less than three years to truly let a person in to become a friend, and not just someone to hang out with. That kind of reticence is not something I think I can afford in adult life. I've retreated more into myself over the past year than I have at any point in the past decade, and it's time to travel outwards again. So the plan for next year, in keeping with Mission Bring Back Happy Chirpy Bunny Sam, is to connect, to make plans, meet people, and initiate conversations, with old friends and with new. Less time inside my head, in the past and the future and all the alternate universes that could have been; more time in the life I'm living, with the people I'm living it with. 

Bonus Resolutions:

1. Write (Part 2): One of my resolutions this year was to reinstate the monthly favourites lists. While I successfully did that privately, favourites scribbled regularly in my Bombay notebook, for the next year, I want to consider bringing them back to the blog - either that, or to write one post a month anyway. In addition to thousand words of fiction I want to write every weekend, this seems very ambitious, but we live and we try, I suppose. 
2. Travel: One of my favourite parts of this year, one of the few golden days that stand out regardless of who I'm talking to, how much work I have, how drunk I am and what time of the month it is, is the weekend I spent in Goa. It's one of the most impromptu things I've ever done, booking tickets and hotels mere hours before departure, having absolutely no itinerary in mind, no elaborate plans and accompanying frustration. Just two girls with their backpacks, staring at the ocean and taking the most fabulous pictures of all time, and that's a feeling I want to recreate this year - a vacation that feels like a vacation.

My resolutions in 2018 - to not buy clothes, reinstate the favourites lists, and not drink more than once a month - are things that seemed necessary at the time, things that I succeeded in doing, by and large, and things that led to a better year. My resolutions for 2019 are bigger, harder (no puns intended) - things that have seemed necessary all my life, but that have been pushed away for one reason or another (procrastination, laziness and inertia come to mind), things that could lead to a better life.

I hope I stick to them.

Happy new year, guys.
~Sam