Monday, January 3, 2005  9:32 pm  <|>
<203> Capsules of Life: Happy New Year! I'm sorry I haven't been keeping up with writing on here lately. I even wrote a full entry at work last week, but never ended up posting it - so this post will contain some paraphrasing from what I wanted to catch up on then as well.

Every time a new year rolls around, it seems like people spend an awful lot of time and energy trying to decide what to change about their lives - resolutions to improve diet, get more exercise, get in touch with old friends, organize their homes, better themselves... even though it seems like these resolutions could come at any time, it is this point in the year in which we feel connected to everyone else doing it at the same time, in some hope that it will help us to keep good on our word that we'll actually go through with these changes. True, most don't last long enough to be scared by the shadow's of Groundhog Day... but none the less... every year it seems to happen. Me? Well, actually I don't have any resolutions per say.. not that I've thought of yet anyhow. For me, it seems kind of silly to make a promise to yourself that you don't intend to keep. Instead, I have been trying to resolve little things throughout the year and believe it or not it's been working. I made a budget back in July and semi-kept to that until my goal, which was the end of the year. Now, I'll still be on a budget for the foreseeable future... but it's a lot easier to plan once you have some data to work with some months past (yeah I know I'm such a nerd - but I half enjoy this kind of stuff... just wish I had more money to manage haha).

Now I can't say the year doesn't start without me thinking about some things I'd like to do better in 2005... but time is a weird concept nowadays for me. I've been thinking about it and really, most of your life you base your timeline around school. You think towards the next break, the next vacation, what you'll do next year. But once you are done with school, once the next months just bring more months of work and then, what? Nothing really changes. This takes some getting used to and even when you are used it to you don't really know how to be. So I end up feeling like I should be planning for something else long term. The new year is here and what am I moving towards exactly? I guess I only work well on goals, and for myself, even without school the last few years I had personal goals like health to improve. Now I have that improved greatly, but that I still battle too. But what prompts me to change over time besides time itself anymore? We're living in little capsules of life, sections that cut apart could be and still survive up to a certain point because they can be qualified that way. But now, how would you cut me? Now I'm basing my timeline on others. Concetta goes off to grad school in too few months coming... then what? What am I waiting for? I could think about grad school for myself, but is it really what I want to do? How long before I have the money to really go logically... will I ever or will I just have to make the jump somehow. I couldn't go right away if I wanted to... how would I pay for it and still manage to live from day to day? I'd like to move to a raise... but technically I just got one with the new year... it's just not quite what I was hoping I guess. I'm not greedy, but right now we get by... but how do you move to the point where you are "comfortable"? I guess I'm just not good with the struggling artist part - that's why I'm more business minded. It's something you deal with when you try to let yourself start a business after you taught yourself to be an artist who already ran her own business... my I'm a weird one.

I was fighting with a cold all last week. The day after Christmas I woke up with a sore throat and it went from there. I haven't had a real cold in a long time actually... and I was taking Tylenol Cold medicine for a couple days but it was really messing with my head so I stopped it. Ah... medicine how we need and don't want you all at the same time. I felt a bit worse for wear the day after I stopped it, but after getting through that last day of it I started to feel better and feel fine now. Good thing I went through it then I guess, because I walked into work today to find ALL of our admin's were out with the flu. ALL OF THEM. So none of them were in and this always leaves the possibility that I'll get asked to do some of their jobs, but that didn't end up happening. Actually it was just pretty dead overall at the office today, so I tried to get done what I could, but there have been quite a few "dead" days there as of late. We are moving in a new direction at work now though and I expect I'll have some more answers (and choices to make) in a month or so's time, if not before that.

So Christmas was good. I went to my parent's house in NJ on Christmas Eve and Dan went to his parent's house (we both live about 40 minutes from Philly, though in opposite directions) but then we met back up in the city on Christmas Day and he came back to my parent's house with me for the rest of the day. We had a nice dinner at my brother's house and I had a good time seeing my nieces as usual. As for gifts, what did I get you ask? The answer would be, among other things, a home theater speaker system, a bunch of dvds, a few video games, books, and a new memory card for my digital camera. I also got 90s Trivial Pursuit, which we played over the weekend and it's pretty fun. I even knew some of the answers! Dan & I came back to our place Christmas night and chilled out for the rest of the weekend, being that I didn't feel very well come Sunday morning and we were both warn out from all the running around the two days prior. Overall it was a good Christmas though.

What else is going on? Well, I'm ready to go to print with my Sticky Art second edition sticker set finally... though I'm having a little trouble with the printing company I selected. They are very nice, but the proofs are coming out too dark and grainy. I can print on my printer just fine and we're both using all digital printing systems, so I don't understand why this is such a problem. I'm hopefully going to get one of the stickers I had to order ahead of time soon along with some new proofs and I guess we'll go from there. If this doesn't work out, I'm about ready to print them all myself like I did for the first edition, the drawback being my concern for how waterproof the stickers will turn out to be. I've found a site that sells inkjet printable vinyl adhesive sheets and ordered a sample pack of paper to test it. Actually I might end up doing that tonight, it looks like it might work out pretty well. I wanted to buy a new, better printer anyway, so this would just make sure I went ahead with it sooner. Of course if I did it myself that would involve putting a lot more time into it directly, but maybe it would be worth it?

I've been pretty productive lately - to the point where I always have stuff to do around the house or whatever, but overall my major goals are pretty much where they should be. I used to keep this long to-do list, which still has a few items on it, but for the most part things seem to get done as they need to lately. My own personal work has been moving along and I actually have the freedom to maybe even take on a new project? We'll see. My energy has kept up lately too, which is always good... it's just that I can't always count on it being there like "normal healthy" people can all the time.

New Year's Eve was pretty fun. Some friends came into the city and we spent actual midnight at Concetta's place then went out to Doc Watson's for some bar time. There was supposed to be a deal $10 cover at 12:30am until 2, but when we got there it was just like a regular bar night. I guess they didn't get a big enough turn out, because the 3rd floor wasn't even open, but we ended up hanging out on the bar side of the 2nd floor (the same floor we usually play pool in but we don't usually go to that room upstairs for drinking) It was emptier than usual, but cool because our little group took over about one third of the partying groups. We had good talks and good times, a couple drinks and ended up around the corner at a diner when we got 'kicked out' at 2am since they were opening up a $10 after-hours bar... I guess THAT was the deal we heard about ;) We didn't want to stay for it though, the diner looked like a much more appealing (and less likely to produce a hangover) idea. So that was a lot of fun too and then we all parted ways at the end of the night. I ended the start to my new year somewhere around 5am and enjoyed epic dreams before waking the next morning. All in all, one of the better new years celebrations to date I'd say ;)

So I'm approaching this new year with a lot in mind and not quite sure (as with every year) how it's going to turn out. But let's hope for great things, great times, and memories that we'll never forget... because after this year I have a feeling - at least for a lot of us - nothing is going to ever be quite the same way again.