I came up with some other goals, at the inspiration of friends.

GOAL: In addition to other books, read Anna Karenina and maybe Infinite Jest. Also Lorrie Moore and Zadie Smith's newest books.
GOAL: learn to not suck at pool (in order to meet people at bars).
GOAL: make enough money in order to start locking my hair.

That childhood Christmas feeling continues to elude me. I keep playing Christmas songs on my iTunes and hoping that Love Actually is going to be on TV in order to get in the spirit, to no avail. This massive snowfall has helped a bit, but in general, the complete dissolution of any immediate resolution in my life has made it kind of tough to operate on cheery, mindless hope. (That and years of never getting exactly what I asked for, aside from gift cards; I'm so tired of the limited infinite choice offered in a gift card. I want to be pleasantly surprised for once, or at least given tangible gratification -- all of which I know is a bullshit thing to complain about.) All of the best Christmas songs are at least a little sad, evoking missed connections and people stuck working, away from loved ones during the holidays. Adult Christmastime is about shattered expectations, or disallowing yourself to even have any in the first place.

I'm being morbid. I'll pep up once I get to my dad's Christmas day I'm sure, and I'll be so stuffed full of food I'll momentarily ignore the challenges I'm going to face in the coming year. I might momentarily forget how plagued I am by these feelings of being rootless and stranded and singular. Singular, I am (have always been) so afraid to admit to being lonely I opt to identify as the less loaded, less critical "singular."

New resolution: actively foster a spirit of love in my life, whatever that might entail.

Ugh. Now I'm due for a list of things I'm thankful for to counteract all of this bemoaning. Believe me, I know. "Too blessed to be stressed." I'm lucky even when I'm not. Loved, cared for, safe, alive, etc etc etc etc. Thank you, again.

This year, I had 3 resolutions, only 2 of which I can remember now. I have certainly grown and learned a lot this year (about change, about myself, about taking care of myself and my hair, about my family, about communication, and on), but next year is gearing up to be the year of big, necessary challenges. I have one goal and one resolution:

GOAL: Escape the ninth circle of hell that is retail (into a more financially secure and intellectually stimulating situation), preferably by my birthday, if not summer.
RESOLUTION: Confidence. Strive to have more faith in myself in every little thing that I do.

That's it. That is all you need to focus on Janelle. In working on those two things, you will achieve so much more, just as you have, bit by bit, in 2009.

* My sister in law wanted to put this on a T-shirt for the fam.

i had a really awesome night.

after a pretty unhappy day at work (ineedanewjobineedanewjob) i went cute for a beer at meandjessi's new favorite bar, blue ruin. um. new favorite juke box (ramones+frankie lymon+"sing,sing,sing"=bestevs) and pool table and 2 for 1 happy hour and loads of cheapo eats around. empanadas hell yeah.

then LPR. cute bartender and queer bingo win and food and fun and fun.

then empire hotel for smh opening afterparty. love artsy black folk. eat that chuck bass.

<3<3<3 my life is awesome even when it's not. it is, it is. i have really terrifers friends and new york. what else is there? nothing. don't even argue. let me ride this high.

I need to find something to devote my energy and emotion to that isn't, you know, myself. Remind self that false starts are better than no starts.

DO YOU BELONG IN NYC?
Absolutely.
You would never dream of moving anywhere else, and we've insulted you by even suggesting you might leave. You love every single thing about this town, right down to its adorable water-bug infestation. Click here for suggestions about how to really enjoy NYC.

Do you belong in New York City?

Not that I needed a quiz to tell me this. (Although I might leave, one day. And I could do without the looming threat of bedbugs and whatnot.)
I know it's pretty 14 of me to post quiz results, especially quiz results from a magazine that I am well aware of the fact that I fit right smack dab into its key demographic, but whatevs. I <3 NY. And I heart Time Out NY. Ever since I visited its offices that Barnard Pre-College Summer and they gave me a messenger bag, I have appreciated and enjoyed Time Out New York Magazine. Not always, but mostly. It seems to live lower down on the economic spectrum than New York (let alone The New Yorker), which is around my neighborhood. However, this quiz (among other things) does spur questions regarding essentialist notions as to what makes a New Yorker, particularly in terms of class. But I'm not ready for my dissertation yet. I just wanted to show some love.

thank you, caroline.

I'm posting now so I can stop thinking about posting.

March was fun, social, self-indulgent. Crazy busy. Not productive on the professional side of things (guiltguiltguilt), but definitely adventurous on the social side of things.

April is flying by. Most recently, I had a really good weekend, having gone home for my uncle's 80th birthday surprise party. Lotsa fam, lotsa food. Quality time, indeed.

I am very excited for summer in the city. If my time here in New York is finite, then I want to live it up as close to the atmosphere of The Wackness as possible -- ie sex, weed, beer, and iconic NY summer locations, all set to a Biggie Smalls soundtrack, colored with a muggy yellow haze*. Erm, maybe. Maybe not. Either way, I plan to relish all the city has to offer -- free SummerStage concerts in Central Park, the art scene(s), coco helado shaved ice carts, the humidity, and my peoples. Fingers crossed, by the end of it I'll have a plan (in the form of full-time employment). Still at that other salacious museum until further notice.

In the meantime, I have a gentleman caller. Dating someone who likes you, whom you also like, is rather enjoyable. Whodathunkit? Please recognize how momentous an occasion this is, and then put that thought away in a drawer so we don't muck this up. I'm leaving out the interesting details, but they are not important ones.

Lately I have an urge to go salsa dancing.

*=okay, so after I watched The Wackness, I wished it were 1994. This weekend I watched Grey Gardens and now I want heels and high waisted shorts, gin fizzes, the Hamptons, and tinkly piano music on a Victrola. I'll take either of these romanticized notions of New York in the summer without a budget, thank you.

Sometimes I read interviews of older people talking about their lives when they were young, and I think "God, to be so young with so much ahead of you!"

And then I realize I'm missing the point.

dood.

from Nitrolicious.

I stupid want these sneakers. Ridiculous, I know. But flyy as fuck, right? Right?!

In related consumer whore stories, I bought that Procedural Dating Kit I posted about when I discovered that Knock Knock no longer produces it. Eh.

The last L Word is tonight and I'm not watching it surrounded by girls who like girls. Qué sad. It has been one of my top shows that I think of in terms of communality, all the time I spent watching it with other women. The L Word has also been particularly affirming because the cast of characters, as well as the main driving forces behind the show, are almost entirely women. Women-centric programming outside of that icky Liftetime/Oxygen paradigm is so rare. Is it ironic, appropriate, or neither that the finale falls on international women's day? sigh.

So far I'm not enjoying it. The music is bad.

One thing I noticed in college is that events seemed to be planned in waves. One weekend (or a series of weekends), there would be nothing going on, and then suddenly, the next, everyone would throw their events. Sometimes it would be in respect to the academic calendar (breaks, midterms, etc), but not necessarily. And the weather could never be taken into account for these event incidence surges. It was all very curious, and apparently still happens, even out in "the real world." (Is it grammatically appropriate to say "out in?")

Things going on this beautiful first weekend in March:
1. Selma and CeCe are in town!
2. Dominique's birthday is Sunday, and she's celebrating with a get-together on Saturday.
3. Caroline is having a house-warming party Sat. afternoon.
4. Apparently, Hoboken (no jokin'!) celebrates St. Patty's day this weekend with a full day (Saturday, natch) of drunken Jersey revelry, and I've been invited to join the festivities of Jing's BF and co.
5. My friend at work just started promoting parties and her first one is Saturday night. She is so excited about this and has been begging everyone to go for weeks.
6. The major art fairs are this weekend, and as I'm supposed to care about contemporary art, I should hit at least the Armory.
7. Oh, and there's a BDSM thing at work tonight that Selm and Naqiya want to go to.
8. It's going to be 66º on Sunday! And I have to work all day. 64º and rain. But I still have to work.
9. It's also Smiley 80s this weekend, haha. I think I went to it .5 times during my tenure at Pomona. For some reason I really hated that party. If they played mostly 80s R&B and hip-hop and people took the intricacies of 1980s fashion a little more seriously, I would probably like it a lot more (and no one except Kelly, Jazmine, and I would go). Also, the red cups and neon accessories littered across campus the next morning are kind of depressing. God, I sound like such a stick in the mud. /tangent

This is just my agenda. I know Naqiya and Gaby also have super-booked Saturdays.

-----
Rule #356: Don't waste your money on Mexican food from a joint entirely staffed by Asian people. The meal will be mediocre at best. (Somebody tried to tell me it is racist to believe this, but I'm not sure that it is.)

5:07 PM Gabrielle: you have plans for tonight
?
5:08 PM me: i might send myself to the movies
5:09 PM Gabrielle: lol
send urself
5:11 PM me: i want to feel like i'm doing things without being hampered by the daunting task of meeting new people
in the event that there is no one else to go out with
5:14 PM of course, i always secretly want to meet new people. or rather, be met.
5:15 PM Gabrielle: hehe
i like it
5:16 PM kind of like reservations at a really great resturant for one.
5:19 PM me: yeah
exactly
today is one of those days in which i would like to feel utterly unlike myself
or out of my ordinary


( what followed. )
Today is going to be better.

Today I hugged a stranger on the subway.

This post is just to remark upon how incredibly lucky and full of gratitude I am for my privileged life and upon how much I've grown in the past few years.

I have recently had a resurgence of nostalgia for audio cassettes and voice recorders, so when I went home last weekend, I dug up my old tapes from sophomore year of college. God, how sophomoric it was. Angst! Self-pity! Breathing into the mic! The experience has somewhat discouraged me from getting a new tape recorder (the old one broke at some point), but also help put things into perspective.

On January 4th of this year, I woke up in the most brilliant good mood, marveling at all the wonderful ways I had grown emotionally throughout college. I promptly regressed several days later, awash with internal guilt regarding wanting to sleep with a certain charming, skeezalicious boy again and feeling detached from two recent deaths (+ more guilt for inadvertently mentally prioritizing these things in that order). This continued for several weeks, ebbing and flowing as it does. I woke up two days ago in frantically overthinking Idon'tknowwhat and abruptly pulled myself out by just accepting the feelings and getting out of bed.

What I need to remember is to recognize and steady the ebb and flow of emotion. That sometimes you feel good and sometimes you feel bad, but bad (or sad or mad, to keep it simplistic) feelings are not grounds for self-hate. And self-hate is usually a gateway to not doing shit -- easily reversed by just getting up and doing shit.

goals for today:
- do the dishes
- run on the treadmill
- finish Mwazi profile for Studio
- exit survey for Shanta
- letter to Rebecca
- cook dinner
- unpack

goals for tomorrow:
- anything I don't complete today
- 2 job applications
- buy gifts and deliver thank you notes to SMH

Reading my friends' blogs, and analyzing what the bulk of their posts concern, judging what their chief struggles are, it becomes more apparent who is an extrovert and who is an introvert. Guess which one I am.

I've officially decided to write letters as often as possible, maybe even at least one every day or so, if I'm good.

So far:
February 12 -- several thank you notes and belated condolence notes.
February 13 -- catch-up email to Josh.

coming up -- RLT; cover letters!; several profs I admire; the people at LACE and Venice Arts; Lisa; Diana; maybe Aidan or Kyle, although anything I write is not for the benefit of their receiving it; love letters to myself; women I admire; family members, gah; minha familia brasileira; someone who needs a letter; Andrés.

Gotta send out love in order to get some. or release. or imagination.

Today was my last day at Studio Museum. QUÉ SAD. I love that place and refuse to let it go.

Well, 2009 has started off with a bang.

Well, 2009 started off with a bang.

my year, via the first line of the first post of each month of 2008

enero:
so. why do i want this crazy-prestigious internship?

febrero:
so. final semester. there are two main ways people talk about this fact: in terms of fear and in terms of living in the moment.

marzo:
i jumped into a pool 64 times in a row today.

abril:
dear getty foundation,

thanks. it was a dick move to make your eligibility reqs include "not graduating before December 2008."

mayo:
can we please just mention that i am super contented right now?

junio:
in the new place. it is so clearly a first place kinda place --

julio:
reminder to self:
most people aren't looking for perfection in a lover/love, they're looking for a specific feeling.

agosto:
i'm in the midst of my biannual family reunion (my mother's father's family), right outside of oakland.

sepembro:
group renditions of the birthday song are one of my all-time favorite birthday gifts, even if (or especially if) over the phone. <3

octubro:
If anyone could tell me why this entry gets so many random anonymous grateful comments, I'd be the grateful one.

novembro:
As glad as I am that this whole hullabaloo (theatrics, really) is finally on its way to being over, and amidst all the unnecessary complications with inadequate voting booths, long lines, and general lack of preparedness, this is an exciting election.

diciembre:
Not only am I upset with Netflix for not reading my mind and continuing to hold my account, I am also annoyed that they sent me "Kicking and Screaming" of all movies.

My GRE score is fine. The test is nothing but an overblown SAT, and the SAT ain't shit as far as I'm concerned. Now I just need to decide whether or not to apply to grad school now or later.

Gaby has reiterated this over and over, but it's really true in so many ways: this time in our lives is really about making decisions and living with them. That seems obvious, but the struggle lies in the living with them. We worry about how we will be judged by these decisions, about the opportunities not taken, about accepting ourselves. We have to learn to be confident in our judgment and stop judging ourselves so harshly. (We are often our own worst enemies.) Missteps will be taken, but we also learn to be confident in our abilities to handle the consequences and learn from them.

I've spent a lot of time feeling regretful lately -- I've indulged more fully in this emotion than I ever let myself before, and I'm trying to figure out how healthy it is. On the one hand, regrets can be thought of as mistakes you haven't learned from, or something like that, but on the other hand, if you don't recognize where you feel loss, you might never get to get it back. I suppose these two sides are really just different stages in the same process though.

I really appreciate some of my friends from high school as people, maybe more so than I did in high school. Much of high school was wasted stressing out about useless emotions, and I don't think I ever really let my friends (or myself) be the friends we needed each other to be. I'm lucky, though, that most of them are actually cool people that I can still enjoy and learn from and about now.

I think I am slowly learning what it really takes to be unafraid of who you are and what you want.

Last night, I had a dream that I realized my father was a junkie and had to take care of him as he was coming down and maybe overdosing (at the same time?)... less than an hour before I was scheduled to take the GRE. I had to ask myself in the dream whether or not I was using my father's condition as an excuse to avoid taking the test, as I hadn't prepared for it enough.

I can count on one hand how many times in the past I have had (undue) academic performance anxiety like this. Well, here goes $140.

Why, why, oh why, is this really cool McSweeney's Reading Night the same night as the all-important Dexter season finale? Sure, we DV-R it every week -- but we also watch it live, as a family every week. This small morsel of family ritual is more important than any cultural (hipstery) enrichment.

Luckily, however, there is no weekly The Office ritual to impede my attending the lesbian erotica reading the following Thursday at the same bar.