Ahh, life.

It's amazing how quickly life gets away from you. You set yourself a sack of goals - "This week I will finish reading that book I started two months ago," "I will finally go browsing at Blue Mercury (but not buy anything," "I will call that friend of mine I haven't seen since Christmas," "I will watch that Netflix movie that's been sitting around for a month." All these things you say, and you honestly do intend to follow through with them. But life gets away from you. The daily musts of the world - work, bill paying, groceries, eating those strawberries in the fridge before they go bad - take up so much energy that you forget to complete the goals you set for yourself, whether they be obligations or indulgences. It's sad, but true.

I find lately that trying to fit in these things is almost as energy-consuming as getting up in time to catch the bus for work, but generally they seem to have rewards that are just as fulfilling as earning a steady paycheck (which I, along with so many others this past year, have come to see as a privilege rather than a right, or a chore.) I force myself to actually take the full hour I'm allotted for lunch (or maybe closer to 45 minutes of it) and not just eat, but read at my desk from that book I should have finished by now. I save Blue Mercury field trips for Fridays as to make them extra special--and yes, I'll admit, I did make purchases - but I waited until I ran out of moisturizer so that I bought things I actually needed. I make sure that my roommate and I do watch one of the Netflix movies I've rented (why, oh why didn't Thandie Newton get an Oscar nod for her portrayal of Condie Rice in 'W.'? It's a shame, I tell you, a damn shame ... though perhaps, upon reviewing her performance in 'The Truth About Charlie' in which she simply butchered the role originally played to perfection by Audrey Hepburn, it's only fair.) And after that's done, before I get ready for my nightly routine, I actually do pull my phone out and call that friend of mine from Christmas.

These things aren't easy to remember; it takes effort and energy to do so, and to follow through on them: It takes so much energy, in fact, that my laundry basket is overflowing, and the strawberries in the fridge have actually started to turn on me, and the dog's hair is beginning to clump together in the corners of my bedroom (though the hallway is clean of them - took care of that last weekend.) But the way I see it, I doubt that I'll sit on my deathbed wishing that I'd done laundry more in my 20's, or cleaned up more dog hair in my life. Watching movies that mock George Bush, however, will probably still make me smile.