Well, I'm 25. It's my birthday, and while the world did not, in fact, end today as the Mayans predicted, I did wake up with a migraine. Thanks, Mayans...thanks.
I also woke to realize that I've been an *awful* blogger this past year (that's right - bold, italicized, underlined, and asterisked). Like a flaky significant other circa 1685 on a sea voyage (to probably kill the Mayans, let's be honest), I promised to write, then didn't, then made a flurry of excuses once you guys got impatient and sad, then teased you with another post, only to act exactly as I did before and drop off the face of the earth (although, again, happily the earth's face is still intact).
So, now, I say it - because birthdays are for reflection, and truth, and eating way too much cake, and getting sloppy drunk with your best friends (which, in my case this year is Quentin): I have failed at blogging.
I've always enjoyed writing, I've always enjoyed making people laugh (something I only discovered recently, actually), and yet I've always been terrified of sharing these things on purpose (letting others read my writing, hearing my songs, watching me perform - anything). This blog was a secret attempt to change that, to "put myself out there" as they say. But, then, I got busy and scared and distracted again. This year, though, I really do want that to change - and not only through this blog. This year I want to do things that scare me - at least once a month (we gotta start slow, ya know?). I want to be vulnerable and insecure and unsure, but I want to try - I want to put something, anything, out there. And that starts now, with this blog, on my birthday - on the end of the world day.
As my first "scary" birthday vow to myself, I vow to write on this blog in the coming year once a week - YES, ONCE A WEEK. I know, lofty expectations can breed monumental disappointments, but you know what - what the hell, let's do this. As my first blog of my new year, I decided to reflect on the past term that I so-assholishly (new vow #2: make up ridiculous words more often) failed to update you on. I'm celebrating my quarter-century crisis in a very rainy Oxford, eyeballs throbbing as I torture them with MacBook light, and most of my new friends - my new family - have flown home to be with their biological kin for the holidays. A blessing and a curse of my birth date: you get an obese old man in a questionable red pantsuit promising you tons of presents and everyone seems really happy to celebrate (in your mind, you), but your friends also scatter away to spend time with their own families. And let's be honest, a lot of people respect the "birthday-christmas-gift-combo-pack" without actually doubling the amount of anything they give - I'm not complaining, just saying.
OK, so Oxford. It's weird. No, really, it is. Nothing makes sense, and nothing is logical - they tell us there are 8-week terms, but then expect you to be on-call during the secret 9th and 10th weeks nobody talks about until a professor emails you asking for an essay you never knew was assigned. Thanks? There's also a secret 0-week (not pronounced, "zero-th week," as I thought, but in fact referred to as "naught-week"...oops). This week, logically the week before "official" term begins, is in theory supposed to be the week when all of the students return and go wild, with parties and dancing and laughter and good cheer. HOWEVER, not-so-logically, previous-term exams can also apparently be held during naught week of the new term - like the big statistics exam being held the Friday of 0-week of next term (i.e. we finished our stats course the last week of November 2012, and the exam is on the Friday before the next term begins, in mid-January 2013). Logical. Totally logical. So now instead of fully enjoying our holiday season, all 26 of us have r(squared) and p(hat) hovering above our holiday cheer, reminding us we have to learn about numbers and graphs and stuff at some point after we trample grannies at Boxing Day mega-sales (like USA "Black Friday") and nurse our New-Years Day (from now on NYD re: vow #2) hangovers.
So, today, while STATA terms float around in my throbbing skull, and the Mayans cry in their misinformed graves, I will update my blog - I will update my blog like crazy. I will make myself a Dutch Baby Pancake (the first breakfast item I ever learned to make), smother it in butter (because butter is delicious, and strangely more yellow in England), drench it in powdered sugar (called "icing" sugar here - hey, what if I don't want to use it for icing?! huh?! huh?! what then?! that's false advertising, or just plain rude), and I will write. Because that's what I love to do - and I forgot that until now.
