This week is my last week off before Spring 2010 semester. It is also the beginning of the new year, January 2010. Usually during this time, I clean my life up a bit by establishing new habits and cleaning my room. Well, things worked differently this year. I already picked up the habits I needed at the start of December. I was an avid runner a year ago and a gym enthusiast before that, but I let things slip away and decided to pick it all up again. This is good, I’m glad I did it before the new year.

The other difference is that this year I don’t have a room to clean,  I have an apartment to clean. Half of which (or should I say, a good chunk of) is filled with things that are my dear boyfriend’s. I’ve been preparing for him to realize yes, I will go through his things and get rid of them. (In all honesty, he had so many things that my things just wouldn’t fit. Unacceptable!) But the forewarning was unnecessary, because he knows me by now and probably saw this coming months ago.

Together we went through his DVDs and games. Just these two things, and I was left with about 234234 orders to put up on Amazon.com, and within half an hour 15 items to package and ship out next day. Notice Ein’s glare in this photo. Yes Ein, I do realize how crazy I must have looked frantically packaging these before the post office closed.

And to the right you will see how my desk currently looks like. As someone who likes a clean, empty desk, squeezing my head between stacks of items for sale to use my laptop at my desk is claustrophobic. I’ve since decided to clutter up my beloved bookcase instead.

As you can imagine, the post office guy isn’t too thrilled about my January clean up either. You should have seen his face as I once again went in today with a bag full of items to individually scan and ship. I have since decided to spare him the agony, and hog the self-shipping machine in front of the building.

The funny thing is, we’re not getting a bunch of money out of this. Sure, we are getting a pocketful. But a lot of these movies and games are so old, they only go for a few bucks. Subtract packaging expenses, shipping costs, and Amazon commission and we get…about $2 for some of these. But I figure it’ll add up and maybe we can buy one or two things we’ve been needing to save up for. The true goal here is to de-clutter the apartment. We are slowly succeeding!

I have yet to sell any of the million Rock Band guitars up for sale, nor the drumset. I am not looking forward to fitting those in a box and shipping them, but I also can’t stand the heap of them next to my bookcase.

To close this unnecessarily long entry, I will say this. Orlando is not meant to have 20 to 30 degree weather on a daily basis. Not in November, not in December, and certainly not in January. I don’t see many good things about freezing weather, other than I can finally wear that cute scarf I throw in the back of the closet and the gloves I put god knows where.

But when our entire back door fogs up, I get to draw all over it and have my boyfriend wake up to exclaim, “Marjorie… What the hell did you do to the window?” I guess that’s winter bliss.

We are now unbelievably in the year 2010. I noticed that I’m not the only one that had a hard time with 2009. While the year brought about a few wonderful things and some life-changing events, it was also one of the toughest years I’ve experienced. I’m looking forward to 2010 being a good year to appreciate relationships and better myself!

Has anyone made new year resolutions? I haven’t, aside from the point I made above. When I went to my morning gym workout today I noticed quite a few people had made resolutions…  I’m usually the only one in the gym at the time I go in, and this time it was pretty full. Funny thing is, I bet I will never see them there again after a few weeks. It’s hard to declare a bunch of goals in January and continue them until December. This is really because people forget, lose track, or lose interest in what they pledged those early morning hours of January 1st.

I realized this years ago and decided to make general goals rather than specific ones. Here are a few great articles that may help you, if you have goals for 2010 or (like me) consider January a month for revamp:

• The Definitive Guide to Sticking to your New Year’s Resolutions - Zen Habits
• The Habit Cheat Sheet - Zen Habits
• Ten Things to Do Before the New Year – Web Worker Daily
• Desktop Wallpaper Calendar: January 2010 – Smashing Magazine
• Getting to Done: Fresh Start for the New Year – Lifehacker
• Choose 6 habits for 2010 – 6 Changes
• Seven Ways to Start the New Year Right – FSM
• What do you want to do in 2010? - 43 Things

What does January hold for me? Lots of cleaning. (If you know me, this is one of my hobbies…) I’ll be going through all of my stuff and donating a good chunk of it to charity (or throwing it out if it’s useless), completely moving into the apartment, cleaning places that really need it, refreshing a few old layout designs, making appointments I’ve been putting off, fixing or replacing things that I’ve been meaning to fix or replace, and giving my dog a good scrub down.

Another year of Halloween is here, and I bet most people have plans. We’re playing it by ear, but we do hope we’re getting a free meal with my mom later this afternoon. We’re planning on doing something tonight as well, but haven’t quite figured that part out yet. I bet it will involve the couch, scary movie marathons on TV, and eating the few pounds of candy we got last week. Exciting!

I think scary movies are the tell-tale sign of Halloween night for me. A few days ago I watched the original version of Paranormal Activity, a movie out right now and probably one that will be fully seated tonight. As someone who scares easily, this movie was not scary and I was disappointed. I think the scares depend too much on the theater setting. Watching it at home must not have had the same effect. The end was shocking, but I slept well after watching it. The movie reminded me a lot of The Blair Witch project — a fake documentary with no special effects, never showing the identity of the “monster.” I think marketing it as “the scariest movie of all time” is what gave my hopes up. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good movie, but it just didn’t scare me.

I think what people find scariest is really personal. For some people it’s psychos chasing after people with chainsaws, for others it’s ghosts you never see, or maybe it’s creatures like werewolves and vampires. For me the scariest movies I have seen are The Exorcist and [REC]. ([REC] was remade into Quarantine for America… Don’t see that one.) Both use little to no digital special effects, and what you see was physically recorded. I guess that’s the kind of visual effects that scare me the most.

I could also list a few movies that scared the crap out of me, and a lot of good Asian horror films, but the two I’ve listed just take the cake.

Any other favorite scary movies out there? I’m curious! And of course, I hope everyone has a fun Halloween!

God grant me the serenity 
to accept the things I cannot change; 
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference

This is a more personal entry of sorts, as I feel it’s time I did another one of those. This year is not quite over yet, but it has been one of the most surprising and exhausting years of my life. After so much bad luck with men, I somehow found someone early this year who accepted me for who I am, genuinely cared for me, and connected with me effortlessly. While our relationship has had ups and downs that are present in every relationship, things between us have been everything I was looking for. I thought this year would be my year, full of positive changes I had been hoping for. Am I now being forced to trade off for this blessing?

I’ve been hit by the bad luck truck, and every time I find the strength to pick myself up and drag myself out of the road I get hit again. It’s the only way I can describe how my months have been feeling. I could go on listing everything that’s happened, but there wouldn’t be a point. Some days I feel strong enough, holding on to a sense that everything will be okay. Other days, not so much.

Everyone has setbacks. Some of the most successful people have had huge setbacks and managed to overcome them. I’m trying to use this year as a learning experience. I can’t change my luck. I can’t turn Ein from a devious puppy into an adult dog. I can’t force people to return my important phone calls within 24 hours. I can’t change my course workload. I can’t change having forgotten something. What can I do? There’s really only one thing I can do. Learn to be patient, with myself and with others. Learn that there are more important things in life. Understand that I have many years ahead of me, and this year will soon be forgotten. Understand that having this much go wrong is not normal, and will not be an every day occurrence.

I hear negativity only brings on more negativity. It takes a lot to get out of that mindset, but I’ve been trying. Today I experienced the worst event thus far, missing a deadline that pushes back my graduation date to 2011, which hit me harder than losing my job last week. I’m currently trying to get everything resolved. I find that surrounding myself with positivity helps create that mindset. I have yet to tell everyone, especially my parents, about what’s been going on. Disappointment is really one of my biggest fears, but I have to find the courage to bring it up. I also find the revelation will bring more negativity into my mindset, so I will not be spreading the word until next week.

I started thinking about a lot of things. What if everything is going wrong for a reason? Am I being challenged? Am I being told to take a different direction with my life, and change things around me? I haven’t figured this out yet. The last time something this awful happened to me academically, I almost gave up. But I found my true calling — teaching. If I wouldn’t have ground to a halt on that road, I wouldn’t have seen the dirt path going off to the other side, bringing me to a better destination. I am talking to an academic advisor Friday, and I will base my decisions on the outcome. Maybe I need to make some changes, and something good will come out of this big mess after all. I don’t know if I can have an override and everything will be okay, or if I will declare a minor to study another subject I’m very passionate about. Is this what I need? I can only concentrate on the positives, even though I am worried what will happen when Josh graduates next semester while I am stuck at school for another year. The future is uncertain, it goes on the list of things I cannot change.

Mindfulness, hope, prayers, luck, or whatever you believe in — send it my way, people!