New Year, Very Similar Me

There’s only so much a girl can change. Perhaps I am growing old. Except that college kids keep mistaking me for their people, so possibly I am not growing old correctly. All the same, I refuse to give up my purple hair or my gratuitous cursing.

Anyway.

Each year, I look around at the flurry of resolutions, leave-it-in-the-last-year lists, and ambitious new goals, and I think, how much of this can apply to me? What can I do better? It seems like the kind of thing you’re supposed to write a blog about. But the answer this year is not much. I am already going full tilt.

I am in physical therapy, trying to build strength. I am still learning a new musical instrument to the best of my dexterity. I’m as politically active as I can get. I wrote a new book last year, and I’ll write a new book this year. I’ve made all the dietary adjustments one can make in the pursuit of good health.

I think, generally, the idea is to look at the ways in which you kind of suck and improve upon them. I’ve hit a wall there. The things that would improve me — more energy, more time, less cyclical Flowers for Algernon-ing due to medications and vitamin deficiencies — are outside my power.

I don’t think any of this is so bad. I can’t fly, either. Everyone lives with their limitations. I’ve tried busting mine, and mostly I just get my havoc wrecked when I do that, so I’ve learned to knock it off.

And I’ve already got a lot of things to work on. Concrete things I can do. Things I will do, slowly, over the course of the year. This is the list:

• Finish one new novel
• Walk all the way around Central Park without fainting or falling
• Run for an office within NYC DSA

And that’s it. Everything else is ongoing, or incidental, or allowed to fall by the wayside.

Happy 2018, everyone.