Og fordi jeg ikke gidder å skrive om alt dette på norsk, og synes dere kan ha godt av litt engelsk ranting i hverdagen, ctrl+v'er jeg dette fra min engelske LJ hit.

You know, I never really bought into the whole New Year's craze. The resolutions you break after two or three weeks, the food, the parties, the fireworks. Maybe it's because I was raised in a single-parent household as the only child, and thus we never had family parties or could afford fireworks, so New Year's Eve was really just an evening with crappy television looking back at the year that had passed and envying the neighbors' kids for having a dad who brought out fireworks.

I think culture has damaged many of us, also when it comes to New Year's. Popular culture as a whole stresses that if you're not smooching someone at the stroke of midnight December 31st every year, you're a failure. You're also a failure if you're not at a fancy party surrounded by fancy friends and, of course, someone to smooch.

As a person with few friends and even fewer persons whom I willingly smooch, you can calculate how many of these parties I've been to. Let's just say I can count them on one hand. And really, I'm not all too envious. Unless you're already in a relationship, or with a friend with special benefits, you most likely end up kissing someone who you have never seen before and won't remember the features of in the morning (or afternoon) since you were shitfaced, and so was (s)he, and the kiss was really just poorly coordinated slobbering.

Nor do I envy people waking up on New Year's morning, January 1st of a new year, with a splitting headache, vomit breath and an upset stomach with minor memory loss and anxiety because you're not quite sure -who- you smooched last night and if it lead to something else. Eventually you check your wallet and see that you have spent quite more than you should on getting yourself so drunk you can't remember anything because, well, it's New Year's and you're supposed to. So January has to be stretched out on as little money as possible, making cup o' ramen your breakfast, lunch and dinner most days, rocking it on the weekends by treating yourself to a bagel with *gasp* butter. (For you students out there this might be normal to you, but to some this is quite horrifying, trust me).

I have spent most my New Year's Eves alone, or by the company of people out in cyberspace, and while I may wish that I too was successful with lots of friends and someone to smooch at midnight, I suppose it could be worse.

The myth that a New Year is something magical and fantastic is also something I scoff at. I'm not sure "Bah, humbug" can be stretched to apply for this celebration as well as Christmas. I don't have Scrooge on my IM contact list, so I suppose I have to live on without knowing, but I am inclined to call the whole thing humbug. The problems I had on December 31st will most likely still be a problem on January 1st, added to it a bit of a financial pinch which doesn't brighten things up. It doesn't matter how many years in a row I tell myself "This year things will be different", because life is pretty much the same every year with the most miniscule variations. I won't suddenly have all the things I wish for on January 1st, or have the means and know-how to acquire them, so even if I were all of a sudden motivated to struggle toward whatever goal I might set for myself simply because I hang a new calendar on the wall, doesn't mean that the year will be all that much greater.

2009 so far feels exactly like 2008, and as far as I know at least half of it will be spent in the exact same place as I am right now: with my ass firmly dug into the groove in the couch with the laptop on my lap and the cat snoozing next to me, considering all the things I rather should be doing than what I currently am doing.

Bah, humbug.