Hectic is Not Full and Calm is Not Empty

I think a normal blog would be all, "here are my resolutions for 2016!" One thing I find most irritating about the holiday season is how everything comes to a halt. Nothing is open, nothing is moving, not even - as the story goes - the mouse. But if there is a theme for this blog, it would be: musing on waiting. I am, in fact, full of ambitions for 2016 - I want to pitch my completed novel to small presses; I want to try to find a crafting hobby; I want to date*; I'd like to finally get certified as an ethical hacker; I am absolutely desperate to read.

I finished my last final of my first semester at NYU Monday night, and I am leaning towards never looking at my grades for the duration of my degree. Since this is (hopefully) the last time I will ever be in graduate school, my GPA is less relevant  than the journey, right? Right? We'll find out, I guess. I'm talking about working really hard and progressing while acknowledging the difference between useful and stressful feedback.

Now these ambitions are real and in my opinion, eminently achievable, but there remains something that I think is more important than all that - one single thing I will call my 2016 resolution. It is far too easy to rush, to overplan, to fill up one's life with logistics. I will be spending New Years at the Concert for Peace, followed by meditation with Dharma Punx. I have in mind some kind of smushy opening of the soul, guided only by the vague sense that I have experienced it before. But 2016 is going to be all about slow and calm and open.  Like a Jack Gilbert poem.

Here's a 2016 wish: calm, thoughtful friends who show up.

*I am the sort of person who would have been better off having a very good childhood friend that I later married, but alas, I failed to think that far in advance. The prospect of online dating is tedious and depressing, and so I am pulling a Charlotte and counting on someone I know to do the matchmaking for me.  (I have no idea when I decided this blog was going to consistently make references to Sex and the City, I swear I never intended to be that sort of person, but here were are.) I may be the first millennial in the U.S.  divesting from algorithmic love while still generally leading a tech riddled life. My totally unoriginal theory is that OKCupid is the rationalizer of chemistry, and that we live in a time where we need to move away from rationalizing because so many people are losing access to intuitive measurement and emotional awareness. My totally unoriginal feeling is that outside of online dating, I have absolutely no idea how to meet men. Therefore! The human matchmaker. We will call her L, and I will keep you updated.