new year. at last.

I'm going to miss break. As time goes by I miss it more and more.

So I'm not really big on making New Year's resolutions. Most of the things I really want to happen are either too ambiguous or outside of my control, and I've realized that making resolutions outside of your control is a bad idea. But I did make one.

I want to make 2010 not suck.

As a corollary, I want 2010 to be better than 2009.

2009 was a transition year in so many ways. So much changed. A ton of my best friends are at college. It was my last year of high school marching band (at least, the end of MB competitions...so, the good parts). I finally have a rough idea of what I want to do with my life (although that changes all the time)--at least I know I absolutely want to write in some way. I ended a relationship that had lasted more than two years. I've learned so much, and I think this is setting up what should be a good future.

Yet there are parts of me that remain unchanged. I'm still blinded by one hopeless idea. One idea that could never work, yet I so desperately want it to. Logically, it can't. But that Romantic part of my brain overrides, and I hate when logic loses.

And then there's the matter of my faith. It's only recently started to actually mean something to me. I've been through all kinds of doubt and skepticism...yet I keep coming back to God and desperately wanting the kind of faith I see in a select few. I could throw all the reasons for God that I've found out there, but I'll condense it to this: at the very least, I believe there is something more than this life for everyone. I WANT to believe in God, and so I do. (The rationalization comes later.) But I know I don't believe as strongly as I could/should.

Maybe the two are connected.

Why am I so desperate to control my own heart? God has a plan for me, I believe this. It's time I took my own advice and let this go. "With downcast eyes, there's more to living than being alive." I wrote my college application essay on the power of this chorus. Time to start living it out.

Bring it on, 2010.

Lyrics--"Closer Than We Think" by The Classic Crime.

And I knew that this would happen, it always does
And I couldn't stop my reaction, so I let it come
I let it come

I still hold the belief that we are free,
that we don't need the rules to see
that despite what we've done, we're not alone
We're closer than we think to home

It didn't take me long to believe that I could do anything,
we turn the songs up loud so we can sing
I am true and I am living
We will walk through the valley of the shadow of the boring and burn it all
No we will not go quietly.