I don't need no stinking resolutions

So let's see, this is the end of the year post where everyone lists what they've done and what they plan on doing for the upcoming year, right?

What I've done:

Stuff.

Some of it was fun, some of it paid, some of it was a waste of time and energy.

Seriously, people with the lists of accomplishments?  Knock it off already, you're giving me a complex.  I don't tally my accomplishments, I like to just go with the assumption that I'm awesome and leave it at that.  So when I read that some people have learned other languages or published a novel, I'm sitting here thinking "crap, I didn't do that... but I got out of bed this morning AND brushed my hair, DOUBLE WIN FOR ME!"

'Cause it is waaaaay too easy to list the things you didn't do this year.  The things that left you disappointed.  Isn't it?

I wanted to be graduated by the end of the year.  Not that I made a resolution about it, because graduating resolutions are made at the beginning of every semester and I was becoming regularly accustomed to emailing the graduate school and saying "kidding, ya'll, I'm not graduated yet.  LOL!"  So when I told my department WAY BACK in April that Enough Was Enough and they were all Tru 'Dat I thought for sure I'd be stroking my degree by now.

But apparently it's harder to get off the chain-gang than it looks.  I mean, the Warden is all "paroled!" and the Parole Board is all "Time Served!" but the idiot with the key is all "yeah, but see we only do scheduled releases during certain times of the year and the rest of the year we don't actually keep the paperwork around because that would give people the impression that there was a system and it's not a system, it's more of an organic process, so the paperwork will be available on-line in December, wait, did we say December, we meant January, and did we say on-line because I'm not sure if that's really possible, have you checked our web-site?"

Seriously Graduate School - don't you want students to, I dunno, GRADUATE?

I.  Guess.  Not.

So the one thing I wanted to get done this year: FAIL.

Whatever, at least the organic process, or whatever the hell it is, means I don't have to keep writing the bloody thing and I still qualify for "student membership" for the organizations I belong to.  That's my silver-lined Purgatory!  Whoot-whoot.

My resolutions for this year are:

Continue to not make resolutions!

I've been wicked good at keeping this resolution.

You could argue the logical fallacy of this argument, but do I look like the kind of girl who bows to logic?  Logic??  I laugh in the face of logic!  I put underpants on my head and dance around slapping my butt in the face of logic!

Instead of sitting down and making a list of things to do and making promises I'm only going to break spectacularly, I'm going to keep my cat inside tonight, watch the fireworks from my deck, and spend the next two weeks writing the wrong year on everything because I'm a little bit special like that.  And I'm not going to dwell on my failure to end the year as Master of Archaeology, Art, and Other Stuff because it'll get done at some point not dependent on a calendrical division imposed by Julian or Gregory or whoever we have to blame for this particular temporal junction.  And I'm going to keep on celebrating the little accomplishments of the day right along side the major ones - I started a fire in the fireplace, it took me two hours to get it going, but finally I made wood and paper BURN - I WIN!!

To you all, readers and friends, known and unknown:
I wish you the best of luck with your resolutions and may the new year bring you greater peace and prosperity, may we have all learned from the lessons of this year and may we not repeat the mistakes of the past, may there be more cookies and less boiled cabbage, may we all forgive and be forgiven, and may we all find our inner grace and beauty and find a way to share it with the world.