Happy New Year! Or Something.

Due to a scheduling issue, Siri Paulson is busy being awesome elsewhere. So you get me again this week.

Are you sick of reading about resolutions yet? Have you blown yours already?

Come sit by me. Have some ice cream.

I understand, and I don’t, the thing about starting a new life in a new year. I’m optimist enough to believe we can change our lives with determination and courage. I’m cynic enough to think if I can’t do it any other day of the year, the 1st of January isn’t looking so great either.

So I make decisions. Proclamations. Plans. And I expect they turn out about as well for me as they do for many another, and we all sitting around thinking of the things we could have done if we’d just gotten around to them.

Yeah, me too.

Have some more ice cream.

So anyway. I’m trying something a little different. Because I love my phone and gladly submit to its technological dominion, I got an app. It’s called 7 Weeks, and the idea is to track the habit you want to build for seven weeks–that’s when it becomes a real habit, supposedly.

So far I’m only doing “write every day” and “watch the money.” And really, I have to decide what I mean by “watch the money” because if I’m just watching while I happily spend it all, that’s probably not going to be helpful.

Anyway. That’s what I’m doing. I’ve got my to-do lists, my grocery lists, my find-my-car app, and now my habit builder. What I really need is an app to move my laundry into the dryer, since I keep forgetting to do that.

Hey. It’s 2016. Where’s my self-washing laundry? How about a dishwasher that loads itself?

Mostly this post is me trying to accept the fact that it’s 2016. I’m so confused by it. I mean, 2015 only lasted about five minutes, what’s up with that?

My kid turns eighteen this year. The United States will elect a new president this year (brace yourselves for eleven more months of campaigning…) I will turn another year older this year, and look around in confusion because what? I’m still expecting to get in trouble for Impersonating an Adult.

It’s been five years since the earthquake that caused the tsunami in Japan. 30 Rock debuted ten years ago. Fifteen years minus a few months ago, I was driving a neighbor to the pharmacy.

Sixteen years ago, people thought Y2K would be the end of civilization. At my husband’s insistence I bought canned food.

It’s been twenty years since Macarena, people.

It’s just too much. I can’t comprehend it. But life goes on, and so must I, so I think I’ll go look at the spring semester schedule of classes. Maybe I’ll try again for Human Origins and Pre-History. Sooner or later, it’s got to work. Or is that just the optimist in me?