Our Guest Tonight Is....2011!

I just wrote 253 words of utter hoo-haw about the final days of 2010. I talked about the year in deaths and the year's best albums, and how people feel pressured to drink on New Years Eve, and what happens to your liver when you drink your blood volume in "punch" that you make by adding food colouring to vodka and then wish for sweet death on January 1.

And then I scrapped the whole damn thing, because it was ungodly boring. Look, I like nostalgia and looks back as much as the next gal, but right now, I'd be lying if I didn't tell y'all that I'm ready for the next thing. I sort of wish I was a southern hemisphere woman, because heaping a new, untested year onto the short, chilly winter days seems sort of, like, cruel, but I'll take the fresh, unopened 2011 donuts now, thanks.

So let's chat about all the wicked things we call look forward to in the upcoming months. First of all, we're finally leaving this awkward decade behind. The Aughties? The Oh-ohs? Were we serious? Thank god for the sleek and easy to understand "Teens." Based on Chinese Feng Shui and digital coding legends, along with predictions I'm currently making up right now, I'm positing that the next decade will be a time of great turbulence and change: earthquakes! Sandstorms! Canadian pop idols descending on an unsuspecting world! More flu pandemics! Pantone colours will run the gamut from beige to ecru! It'll be a time of great changes, in which everything basically stays the same, but with more technologies to befuddle the old and the poor.

By the time we get another decade in, I'll be 37 years old - maybe settled, maybe not, with hopefully a higher net worth than my current standing (I'm at minus nineteen thousand dollars, which isn't super inspirational, but whatevs). Maybe a nice spousal-type person, or a couple kids - hell, maybe both! I'm feeling greedy tonight! - and I'm sure a I'll be running really irritating mommyblog about organic baby food and the best ways to roll when Junior blows chunks all over the papaya pyramid at Whole Foods. But also, I hope, with solid relationships with my friends and family, and the ability to ask for help when I need it, and the ability to give help when it's needed. What I look like, what with my unbrushed hair and my potentially fat ass (I come from hearty stock! I'm big boned! I'm really, really lazy!), will hopefully come to matter less and less as I conquer the January-first thing and move more into sane, healthy adulthood. And if not, there're always squats.

The next few years promise to be jazzy and playful, with oakey notes and a sparkling finish. Whoops, sorry: that's tomorrow night's champagne. But 2011 should also be a good time! Global warming brings us spring earlier with each passing year; I'll be refining my prairie girl/zombie fighter ensembles; I'll (probably) move out of student housing and into a big-girl apartment. I'll be able to say the words "my boyfriend" without having an out-of-body experience. I'll travel: my dad has promised me a father/daughter pilgrimage to Lebowskifest, the closest I'll probably ever come to having religious ecstasy. I'll have a paycheck-type job. I'll buy more contact lenses, try new foods, see good movies, kiss, write, bike, eat, drink, make new friends, renew friendship vows with others, and start paying off my horrible student debt.

So I'm not making any resolutions this year. None of this "I'm going to lose fifteen pounds and only eat kale for three weeks" bullshit, because that's punitive and unfun. I vow to be interesting to talk to - last night I had dinner with a man who is not only a tombstone carver, but also a champion sled dog racer, and he was cool as hell - and interested in the world around me. I promise to try new things: a different route to work, a new meal (I ate, like, one hundred burritos in 2010), a small kindness for a stranger. I'll try to take care of myself, both physically and mentally. I'll work on things with my family, who need kindness and guidance and a listening ear 365 days a year. I promise to try, really hard. And I vow to fail sometimes, because I'm going into 2011 the same way I'm leaving 2010: as a human being.