Everyone Loves a Boston Girl

It’s been a little while but finally, on January 1, 2008, I have my New Year’s resolutions ready. Yayy! I’ve got lots to work on this year. All good stuff. I like to take my resolutions really seriously, mostly because I love making goals for myself and figure the beginning of the year is a good time to review what I need to work on and then see what changes in a year. I guess I have a sad, sad idea of fun. Oh well…knowing me, I’ll probably forget all about them until I look back one year from now. I’m really going to try, though. Why not, right?

New Year’s Resolutions for 2008

1) Find a job that I really enjoy and can utilize my mad skillzz at. This really should not be as difficult as it feels right now. Seriously my top priority of the year as, yes, I love freelancing, but would prefer it to be more of a side thing right now. I need to get out of my apartment and be around other people and stop constantly talking to myself (my friends are starting to notice it now…eeek). I’ve been talking about getting a job for like 6 months now, sooo it really needs to happen…and soon.

2) Be healthier in terms of working out and eating. Who doesn’t have this resolution? I don’t think i have a terrible diet, but I just have weird eating habits. I believe a lot of this has to do with my working at home schedule…keeping weird hours, eating at weird times, being inside a lot. Once I have a job, I am joining a gym and until then I’m doing lots of pilates. I promise.

3) Write a lot more. Sometimes I get burnt out from writing for work and I don’t write the stuff I really want to. So, I really need to take more time out and write what I want. I also need to read more. Once again, I always feel like I can be doing freelance work and I don’t sit and relax with a good book nearly enough.

4) Learn to speak conversational Japanese. I just started learning and it’s an extremely difficult language so I want to see how far I can get in a year. Right now I’m just learning the Katakana and Hiragana alphabets and that has been a challenge enough. Umm why do I want to learn Japanese? I’ve just always wanted to. And for the first time in my life I’m not in school, soo I need to be learning something!

5) Get my finances in order. Ha. I hate saying that because it makes me sound so pathetic. I’m not one of those people who is in credit card debt or anything (I pay off my cards every month, thank you very much!), but between grad school loans, expensive Boston apartment and living, and freelance payment confusion, I need to sort myself out. I like to go out, have fun, go shopping, etc. and not constantly talk/worry about money, so I just want everything to be on a schedule so I don’t have to think about it too much. Hopefully a new job will help this situation.

6) Network more. I have the best friends in the world and think that having just a few really good friends is far more important than having a ton of friends. But having connections with people is so important and sometimes I feel like I just don’t know enough people. I really want to get out and get to know more people. Chels and I joke that when one of us is going on vacation, we have to notify each other well in advance so the other person can figure out what they’re going to do that weekend. We joke, but it’s really not funny.

7) Sleep more/get on a better sleep schedule. I’m a horrible horrible sleep person. I’m a night owl to the maximum and never ever want to go to bed. I have to force myself. Once I’m asleep, I could sleep forever, but I make myself get up at a reasonable time or I’ll feel like a waste of space. This results in me not getting much sleep at all, ever. I’ve come to learn that I don’t really need much sleep; as long as I’m keeping busy, I don’t get tired. But this can’t be good for my body. And I need to fix it. I’m hoping that with a job, this will remedy itself out a bit (gosh, a job might just help all my issues!). I seriously can’t imagine myself ever ever going to bed before midnight though, so it will be interesting.

Figure out what I want in life. I dunno. I figure I’ve totally changed as a person this year and really came to understand myself. Now I need to figure out what I want the future to hold. Uhh I doubt I’ll really come to any conclusions on this any time soon, but still worth thinking about. Because clearly I’m confused on a few issues.

9) Cook more. This year I started experimenting a lot more in the kitchen and I’m hopefully going to become even better at cooking and baking in 2008. I’ve learned from the best so far (my parents), but still have a longg way to go. Armed with my new mandoline, blender, food processor, etc., as well as Martha Stewart Living, Everyday Food, Bon Appetit, Gourmet, and Cook’s Illustrated (um, I LOVE cooking magazines), I should be good to go. Now I just need more people to cook for or I’m going to gain some serious weight.

10) Start some of the business ventures I have in mind. I don’t feel like elaborating here, but there is soo much I want to do. First of all, Chels and I have to get our cooking project started. Um seriously.

BE HAPPY!!!!! I love being happy and really, it doesn’t take much to make me happy, sooo I’m pretty sure I won’t have a problem with that. But I want 2008 to be the happiest year yet!


Yeahh, so I think that should be enough to keep me busy for the year. New Year’s Eve was a pretty good time, but I’ll talk more about that later. Maybe. Here are a couple pics from it for now anyway.

Me and my fave girlies.

I just think this pic is great because I look soo happy with my red wine and Red Bull. Typical.