In the Spirit of the Season

I hate New Year’s Resolutions. I just can’t understand the impact New Years has on making important decisions. If you realize you’re getting fluffy in October, then start exercising in October por favor, or follow in my footsteps and embrace the chunkier side of life. And it almost seems like people think it’s a magical thing to do because they always choose the biggest and most intense goals. If you’ve not succeeded at bringing back the parachute pant by now, 2010 is not the break you've been looking for.

Now that we’ve covered my issues with resolutions, I’ll address my replacement of the traditions. I love lists. Mostly I find myself writing them, then either losing them or deeming them unworthy of my attention, but I still enjoy them nonetheless. Therefore, I have composed a list of things that I am desirous of seeing happen in twenty-ten. (And yes before you ask, I am fully aware that these are new year’s resolutions by another name; I also have an affinity for irony.)

1.Take a road trip with someone who loves life where the only intention is to meet fun people and get amazing pictures.

2.Do something that completely terrifies me. Graduation does not count as that is a given, but cleaning my closet might because that’s totally optional.

3.Go visit my besties. That would be Allison, Andrea, and Sarah; idk, I like to party. Idk, my life rocks.

4.Make a woodcut print. I want to carve a tree out of a tree, then make beautiful prints. I also want to do it left-handed.

5.Hang up all my pictures and art in my room. My yellow walls have been empty for the last 4 years, and I’ve had all the frames, etc. for the last 3.

6.Be kinder, and gentler. Those are the two fruits of the spirit that I have the hardest time with, and it really does sadden my heart.

7.Invest in more people by assuring them that I care about everything in their lives and want to be there for them always; sometimes the only thing people really want in the world is someone to love and listen to them.

8.Blog more consistently. I can; I will...Don't hold your breath.

I also want to revisit NOLA and D.C., and then visit Texas, California, Colorado, and Europe, however, I don’t think that’s all going to be happening this year so maybe it can wait until 2011. What is it that you’d like to accomplish this year?

you say you want a revolution

Sometimes, I can’t sleep, and sometimes that translates into me pretending I’m Sarah Jessica Parker circa 2001 wearing ridiculously fabulous clothes while writing a witty and charming column. Clearly it’s still her voice I hear reading my words as I write them; I don’t really like to hear myself talk. Also that last statement is a lie. I actually really do enjoy hearing myself talk, which is probably what got me into my current predicament—writing a whole lot of not much just to appease myself. I know that initially “Jenna’s Journey’s” was intended as a travel blog, but I don’t travel that much, or maybe just not anywhere interesting. Except that this summer I traveled to a far away land and met amazing people and experienced things I couldn’t even begin to fully explain (or maybe I could if someone asked) and I never even blogged once. I guess I’m lazy. And super self-conscious. I don’t like for my unfiltered thoughts to mingle with the general public; it makes me nervous. However, I can’t sleep, and my life is a journey, so I think it all balances out in the end. I doubt this gets published, mostly because I think I’m silly and I know when I read this over I’m going to say, “Really Jenna? No one cares about any of that.” And I’ll probably say it out loud because as previously stated, I like to hear myself talk, and I’ll probably lament the way I frequently began sentences with conjunctions, and then I’ll save the file in my computer as a free-writing project and open it once a year to groan about…well, me. I wish that I had something important to say. In fact, I wish that a lot. Sometimes I even wish it on stars, “I wish I had something worth saying, and someone worth saying it to.” I don’t really even know what that means, and clearly the stars don’t either because as far as I know, it hasn’t happened yet. Also, I just told my reoccurring wish, so I think I just jinxed it forever. This last semester I had a professor ask me to stay after class to ask why I didn’t speak out more during class. It was very flattering to hear my opinions were valuable, but my mantra prohibits me from doing so. What I try to do is, rather than speak incessantly just to prove I can read, use context clues, or suck up, wait to speak until I have my moment of brilliance. Sometimes that never happens in a class, but when it does, it feels great and I leave feeling accomplished instead of annoying. The problem with this is that I think it may be translating into a lifestyle, and Im not really sure if that’s a good or bad thing. Sometimes I never say the mediocre things that plague my mind, because they’re mediocre, but then they build up until I can’t carry them around anymore and they burst forth in an intense moment of analyzation and bewilderment and I end up writing when I could be sleeping. It’s a good thing to be picky about your revelations, right? To wait for your moment of brilliance when you have a great idea that you know the world absolutely has to have. That way you’re never accused of being conceited or dumb or annoying or anything else derogatory that can be said. But what if one of those mediocre thoughts is the fuel for someone else’s fire, for someone else’s moment of brilliance? Then isn’t it selfish not to share all your thoughts? But then, what if it’s true and no one wants to hear your thoughts to begin with? Will that realization crush any hopes of future brilliance? Does it work like that? I guess what I’m trying to say is, everyone has something to say, but a lot of times no one says anything. I don’t understand that; I’d like to understand that. And I’d like to have a moment of brilliance and something constant in my life to balance out all this life change business that’s currently happening.