Another Year Gone

New Year's has always depressed me. I've theorized it had to do with the end of the holiday season which I love so much, the return to school, or just the end of another part of my life. There's something about this year, however, that just depresses the hell out of me. 2011. It just sounds shitty. 2009 was a terrible, awful year, that tore me apart. 2010 rebuilt me, then tore me down again, and now, slowly, I'm being rebuilt. I don't think I can take another breakdown. When I hear all of the optimism about the new year, I think, "that's what you want, but it's not what you're going to get." Resolutions are like miracles. There's few, and they're small, and not everybody believes in them. I have my own resolutions for the year, but I don't know if they're going to work out. I will try, but I don't know if it will take.

Tomorrow, we begin the new year. When we started 2010, I thought it would be fantastic, a fresh start for a new decade. Reality does not think so, and will beat your ass for it. So, as we start 2011, I go forward with a sense of cautious optimism. I met many good people in 2010, I hope to meet more. I hope to do the things that I want, to enjoy the things that I have, to appreciate the ones I know. The future is uncertain and terrifying, but I hope that I will persevere. I hope that this year I won't be torn down, and I hope that I will love this year completely.

The Dog Days Are Over!

So I just finished my fall semester at FGCU! Thank God, the semester was horrible. Seriously, the schedule was terrible having so many huge things due within days of each other! And then the teachers, holy shit, I've never had so many bad ones. Assholes. Plus the classes were pretty dull.

The students were all good people though, and I made some more friends than I assumed I would at the start. It's amazing how well people bond when dealing with incompetence.

Speaking of incompetence, group projects in college are evil. In high school you see your partners everyday. In college, you can lose contact with a partner and then everybody is screwed. I'm just glad those projects are done. The air seems fresher, the food tastes better. I've had this monkey of projects on my back since mid-October. Finally, I can breath again.

As I was driving into my neighborhood after finishing my Experimental Psych nonsense, the last end-of-semester stuff I'd have to go to campus for, "Dog Days are Over" started playing on my Sirius. Sometimes, life's little things like that can make everything better.

Remember This

So I saw someone be cynical about Christmas recently and figured, as we move into the stress-induced mania that is finals week, I should go ahead and post this, as I did when I first began this blog.

Christmas is my favorite time of year. Not because it gets colder and we get presents, but because people let themselves relax and enjoy life and the people dear to them. It's the one time when we can forget our worries and take a moment to reflect on what we have, what we're thankful for, and what really matters. So here, I post an excerpt from Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" that I feel perfectly sums up how I feel about this special holiday.
"But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it comes round-apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that-as a good time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say God bless it!"
-"A Christmas Carol"