So, in support of my singular New Year's Resolution of achieving happiness, I've decided to name this year "The Year of J-----", for all those out there who needed a handle for where we're at.



For Reference and Comparison, Here's My Catalogue of Ships:

2009: The I Was Stood Up But Have a Studio so Neener-Neener Year
2008: The Second In-Between Year
2007: The Artistic Book Projects Year
2006: The Meeting-the-Best/Sloughing-the-Worst Year
2005: The Art School is Way Better than Utter Despair Year
2004: The Year of Illusion and Disillusion
2003: The Year of Community
2002: The Year of Returning
2001: The Year of Spanish
2000: The Year of Farms and Buses
1999: The Year of Brats, Babies and Escape
1998: The First In-Between Year
1997: The Year of Freak-outs and First Love
1996: The Year I First Left the Country
1995: The Year of Boredom
1994: The Year of Venturing and Friendship
1993: The Year I Learned about Geographically-Related Cultural Difference
1992: The Year of Commercial Fishing
1991: The High School Sucks Year
1990: The High School is Way Better than Junior High (!) Year
1989: The Year of The Perm
1988: The Year I Gave Up Pretending to be a Boy
1987: The Awkward Urban-to-Rural Move Year
1986: The Year of the Divorce
1985: The Year of Three Moves
1984: The Year My Father Let the World Down
1983: The Year of Private School
1982: The Year of the Evil Teacher
1981: The Year I Learned to Walk Again
1980: The Year I Became a Sister
1979: The Year All the 'Neighbors' Met Me
1978: The Year of the Kitty
1977: The Year I Must've Fallen in Love with Words
1976: The Year of my Beginning

I know, I know, this year's title is a somewhat anomalous... and could also be known as the Year of Happiness, but I prefer the Year of J------ because it reminds me to be utterly self-focused, self-centered, selfish, and to stop worrying about what others think. Paradoxically, I would like to believe this philosophy will eventually have payoffs for everyone, however.

For instance, today I had my first 6am-wakeup class, and I chose to cuddle with my dog, feed him well, and take a shower before leaving because all of those make me happy... Herald was pleased too (and no doubt my students who didn't have to look at my greasy hair).

After class, I went and signed up at the local Y and spent an hour in the gym working out, not because I made some easily-neglected "Fitness" resolution, but because I think it will make me happier to feel more inside my body (lately I feel like I walk around with heavy plastic pillows strapped to my 'actual' body, which is more awkward-feeling than lowering of the self-esteem although it does the latter as well). However, I also think this'll work out for others because it'll potentially mean that I stop whining about how none of my clothes fit me any more (even my boobs seek multiple escape paths).

After working out, I went to my studio, feeling highly pleased with myself, and ate a very moderate lunch (including baby carrots!) and read my mystery book. The reading the mystery book part made me very happy, and it will later result directly in my mother's happiness because as soon as I am finished, she gets her Christmas gift back so she herself can read it.

See! My Happiness = Everyone Else's Happiness! Why have I been missing this all these years?!

And now I am writing on my blog, because I've told myself that it will make me happier to be writing again, particularly journaling, or public journaling as it turns out, because I like to blather on about nothing in particular, and although my life is boring, I need to find a more conscious way to interact with it (to be happy), and blathering helps with that. Also, as my readership has dropped from a steady 8 loyal 'fans' to a small set of 3 super-troopers, it means I'm at little risk for revealing private things that then make the gossip circuit. For a while, this conundrum has messed with my ability to blog... the feeling like sometimes when I put something out here, it becomes an uncomfortable topic of conversation out there, whether on the phone or otherwise. I do, afterall, tend to vent my spleen here, and reveal scandalously lascivious behaviors better belonging to a porno... no, actually not that last part, which isn't really my cup of tea, but I do vent, and I do wish, for some reason, to say incredibly private things in ways that don't reveal me, which I finally admitted to myself is impossible.

Anyhow. Class went fine today. Mostly a bunch of youngsters, about half Running Start, and a couple of older chaps returning to school. I'm more curious about my evening class, truth be told. They're always the weirder classes, although my last afternoon class (about 90% Running Start) ended on a truly uplifting note that I'm still feeling good about.

And one little trick that I've been finding quite helpful in the filling-in of the brain-ruts (NM recently told me the psychological term for 'brain-ruts' since she is also trying to pry herself out of them, but I can't remember it because I like the term brain-ruts better), just to end on. Well, basically, I've been imagining every person or circumstance that has hurt me as a rodent. I get to imagine the particular type of rodent (I have a household hamster, rat, gerbil, chipmunk, and vole as well as the irregular rodent passersby) each person/memory is represented by, and then I imagine that there's this tiny little cage that I secret in various parts of my body. I have to move it around... it's part of the process. And when the brain-ruts are getting too strong, I encourage their characters (the rodents) into the cage so that they might not run rampant among my arteries and organs, along the inside of my skin, prancing and chewing on brain matter, shredding of the lungs, i.e. making ruts in my body. And just to make sure I dont' get too mean spirited about imagining and caging the rodents, I see the cage as a portal into another green universe, so that placing the rodents there is best for us all. They just don't belong in my body, is all.

And I know it's totally silly and childish, but it works better than many of the different methods I've sought for making my mind a healthy place.

Okay, okay, okay. I'm off.