New Years: The Sequel

As promised, the following is what I did on New Years 2008.  As I stated previously, pretty much my past New Years have sucked.  So, my solution was to go into New Years not having any expectations.  Because of this, my night was a success.  And because of this success, I will most likely have expectations next year, which will result in me having a miserable New Years 2009.

One of the pieces of advice I followed from my past post was to surround myself with “good friends and cheap drinks.”  Well, I followed one-half of this.  I had never had a New Years with a group of my closest friends since about 2004, so I made an effort to surround myself with friends.  This year, I traveled down to school, where I finally got to spend New Years with my closest friends.  We started our night early in Washington, D.C. at a friend of a friend’s apartment.  However, instead of drinking cheap drinks we were provided with a nice food spread and very, very expensive drinks (and very, very is an understatement).  We then topped our night off in Adams Morgan in D.C.

Throughout the night, I had no expectations.  I did not form an opinion on whether the pregame at a friend of a friend’s place would be good or bad or whether the bar in Adams Morgan would be good or bad.  I just let the night take me wherever.  I think it gave me a more positive outlook on the entire night from the start and did not allow my preconceived notions cloud the night in negativity.  Overall, it was a pretty successful couple of days and I am glad that in my last New Years in my childhood, we went out with a bang.

After this glorious night and the following hours of sleeping off the large amounts of drinking that went on, I sat down and reflected on the past year and what the future holds.  The first thought that came to mind is that, essentially, this is the last six months of my childhood.  I have one more semester of undergraduate college left and after May, all my friends and I go our separate ways in the real world (I’m sure I will have a full post on this coming up in the next few weeks).  I also began to think about my New Year’s resolutions for the coming year and here is what I came up with.

My first resolution is to eliminate the words “hate” and “awkward.”  In today’s society, and personally, we use these words too much.  I know I use the word “hate” way too much.  It is a very strong word and I throw it around lightly when talking about, well, things that don’t deserved to be hated.  For instance, in one of my past posts I said I “hated Christmas.”  Truth be told, I don’t hate it.  I just dislike it.  Hate is a strong word that should be saved for people who have done terrible things or terrible events that have occurred.  For instance, it is okay to hate Hitler and the Nazis, but not okay to hate something or someone who, in the grand scheme of life, is just not that important.

Awkward is another word I hate… er… dislike, and this is why I want to eliminate it from my vocabulary.  People my age use awkward for everything–anything that makes someone feel slightly uncomfortable.  I can’t stand it when people, girls especially, call a situation awkward.  It effectively has become a word that is completely not descriptive of anything.

I have also come up with a couple other New Year’s resolutions that I hope to keep.  Looking past the obvious ten pounds everyone hopes to lose (except for assholes who think they are too skinny) and finding that girl of your dreams, I really hope to treat people with more respect.  In general, I think I have done a pretty good job of this so far, but I really hope to eliminate the trash talking that most of us do, and to, more importantly, within respecting people, not take my loved ones and friends for granted.  Life is too short and some people could be gone tomorrow.  This is why we must not take for granted the time we have with people.  This goes for my college friends and also family members.  With my college friends, we have to make the next six months the best of our lives before we have to work or go to graduate school, and leave everything out on the court (as my past coaches would tell me)–in other words, complete the final chapter of our childhood and not leave anything up for debate (well now I definitely have material for a future post).  For my family, I feel like the best way to do this is to always be appreciative and not get mad at stupid things (and no, I am not writing this just because I found out my mother and brother read my blog).  I know this resolution is a daunting task for all of us, but hopefully 2009 will be a great year with completed resolutions.