2009 was a good year for me.  Honestly, I think any year would have looked like a good one after the absolute mess that was 2008, but 2009 was actually very good.  I left Home Reports, I started grad school, I moved in with my best friend — life was good in 2009.

For the last few years, I’ve been pretty anti-resolution.  I suppose this came from the fact that every year, I would be seized by a romantic Disney wraith and in the subsequent delirium I would resolve to start dating again and fall in love with a brilliant, bespectacled man who would let me name our future babies with traditional names my grandmother in Finland would be able to say.  Since that’s just a hair beyond crazy, it never happened, and I would thus break my resolutions.  I am not Princess Buttercup, nor is my life directed by Rob Reiner (awesome though that would be).  So I gave up on them for a while, thinking maybe I’d get my head out of the clouds just a bit.  And I did… mostly.

Anyway, this year, I want to make some resolutions.  Some realistic, attainable ones.  None of this fairy tale business, but stuff I can work toward and attain.  So here they are.

1. I know that as an introvert, I can get to be something of a hermit.  In 2009 I made a pointed effort to spend time with my friends on a fairly regular basis, and with a handful of them I managed it pretty well.  Perhaps this year I can broaden the net a bit and see more of my friends regularly.
2. Up until 2005, I kept regular diaries.  Paper journals.  I filled them at a regular clip and never really neglected them.  However, when I got back from England, I lost the drive to write in mine — mostly because I would read the England parts instead of adding to the journal every time I opened it.  I lost the regularity of it, and I stopped writing.  I hope to pick it up again this year and use my journal regularly.
3. I want to keep in better touch with the friends I have who aren’t local.  I have quite a few friends who aren’t in the Atlanta area and keeping in touch with them can sometimes be difficult (especially if they’re not on twitter or facebook) so I would like to try to maintain those connections.
4. I want to get into better shape.  Being a history major, my life doesn’t really lend itself to much in the way of physical activity, so I need to create it for myself.  My roommate has a Gazelle, so as long as I keep myself using it I am good for cardio, and in the past I have found that I quite like yoga, so I hope to pick that up again.
5. I would like to find time in every week to read one book for fun.  This may be hard, particularly in the end of the semester when I’m working on term papers, but I feel like there is time in my life to read one book a week that isn’t assigned to me by a professor.
6. This one is a resolution I have been making year after year, and have yet to truly adhere to — I would like to stop biting my nails.  I do it when I’m anxious or upset, and often I won’t even realize I’m doing it.  It’s something I definitely want to stop doing, though, so here’s to yet another year of trying!

I may not attain all of these things, but I feel that they aren’t unrealistic goals to set for myself.  That’s already a step in the right direction.