Self-Improvement Update: In Which I Commit to More Fun in 2008

I'm not one to make New Years' resolutions.  Self improvement ought to be something you can do any day right?  And mid-winter is an awful time, I think, to be making sweeping condemnations of past habits and ambitious commitments to new behaviors.  Winter is for sleeping and being happy with what you got--friends, family, a warm place to sleep, and a kitchen full of lentil-loaf because, you know, it's too dang cold to walk to the grocery store. This winter was spent making mead, knitting scarves, and taking cocoa-milk baths. It was a good winter.

Spring is really when I get the urge to reinvent myself.  Now that spring is almost here I'm beginning to undertake missions.  Moving furniture around, learning to drive a stick shift, planning river trips, and knitting lace.  I'm even thinking a lot of going back to school, getting my PhD, and becoming a famous globe-trotting science type person.  I am supported in this by a cadre of friends and coworkers, women so badass they can think in binary code and wrestle grizzly bears, all without sweating or messing up their hair.  The plan is hindered by relative poverty compounded by a car that may explode any moment and concern that five more years in this town will kill my partner, someone I love dearly and isn't worth much in life-insurance. I worry a lot about money.  I also worry about the fact that I am 25 years old, have a college degree, and have very little in terms of financial and career stability.  Am I turning into a grown-up? Please, God, if I have to get older please don't let me go boring as well.

In order to combat this feeling that I'm getting too settled in a life-path to nowhere I've decided to make a few small, admittedly late, resolutions for the new year.  First, I am going to go on adventures without sufficient planning and stop fretting about every minor detail or possible hangup.  From now on nothing in my life can go wrong just more interesting.  This one has already been put to action.  I'm doing a whitewater training in Oregon this May and I have no idea how I'm getting there.  I am refusing to panic and trying my best to think "adventure!" rather than "plane tickets, OH MY GOD!"  Even if I manage to afford the flight how am I going to get to the meet-up.  Don't know.  Fun!

I'm going to eat better and do 600 pushups a day.  One of my fabulous bear-wrestling friends introduced me to the overwhelmingly orgasmic joy of fresh eggs.  I need chickens; I need them or I will die.  I have plans for a small coop to feed my new habit, and a plot at a nearby community garden.  I am on a mission of flavor for 2008.  I am also on a mission for giant raft-rowing muscles.  This one just sucks.

My final resolution for '08 is to get outside more, pout around my house less.  Life has been crazy sweet to me, I've got issues like anyone but nothing to mope about, I absolutely need, for the sake of my mental health, to get out of the house and go climbing, swimming, art gawking, whatever at least once a week.  I'm going to contact old friends I haven't spoken to in ages and reconnect with my passions. If it kills me.  But probably I'll just get a better tan. So there.