More Self-Absorbed End-of-Year Blithering.

If you open a bottle of champagne on New Year's Eve, you have to finish the whole thing by morning, 'else your dreams won't come true, right?


2011 was the best year of my life. Not unadulterated happiness, but progress and joy, and enough struggle to make me believe it was real. My roommate and I had a quiet New Year's Eve at home with a pizza and chick flicks - I had wanted a grand NYE, surrounded by my favorites, to give an important year its proper send-off, but that's not how the fortune cookie crumbled. And when midnight came, it felt too ridiculous to toast to the past year: "To grabbing your dreams, to loving your home, to being where you belong," these are things you say idealistically. Amid all the fear and heartbreak, these things fell in my lap, and I'm so lucky I can hardly bear to type about it in case I jinx it. What's next, life? (god? internet?) What will I look back on in 2012; what will I be clinking to for 2013?


Here's a few more bubbly goals for 2012, in case the other ones prove too easy. I want to wear fire-engine red nail polish, sing when people can hear me, take the initiative, wait for the light before I cross the street, eat olives without flinching, find a dashing date for my brother's wedding, drink champagne for no reason, pronounce French unabashedly,

I want to read books slowly and learn forgiveness.

I want to join a gym and get strong again (ohhh, damn you, budget).

I want to love my opinions.

I want to stop being afraid of iPhones.

I want to register to vote in New York City.

I want a vacuum cleaner that works, a dresser with all its drawers, and a rolling pin.

I want 400 followers on Twitter.

I want to be rowed across the pond in Central Park (that's right. Passive voice).

I want to have more triumphs than regrets, and a pile of goals siren-singing to me.

Your turn.