Meet the family! (Well, on member at least!)

This post is going to be delicated my dear aunt who I realised barely, if ever, gets a mention on here. And she damn well deserves to!

She doesn't like boys, especially the teenage ones between the ages of 18 and 25. She is my legal gardian and any boy that comes near me (this often times includes my 19-year-old cousin) is evil. She should know; shes had enough trouble over the years with them! So, everytime I talk about getting together with my boyfriend, her eye twitches a little bit. I do have to give her credit, though-- she's doing the best that she can and she didn't have to take me in and sign a bunch of complicated papers just to say that she would accept full responsiblity for me. She trusts me, but only because he knows that I've been engrained with many anti-boy lectures from the moment I arrived in her house.

She also trusts me with the car, but only because she was the one who taught me how to drive. To give you a little background as to how challenging this was, my aunt likes to drive a very consistent five miles per hour under the speed limit and obeys every road rule known to the Department of Motor Vehicles. I also had to learn on a standard transmission or I didn't drive; there was no other option. So, the first time she took me out on the road, I went too fast, gave her severe whiplash, and she yelled and screamed and told me not to cut off any school buses (and yes, I did almost cut off a school bus). She made me drive everywhere, even if I had absolutely no interest or desire in doing so. And yes, my aunt made me drive up many a steep hill so I'd really learn how to catch that clutch. Because of her insane home version of driver education (she claimed to be a far harsher judge than any of those fools at the DMV, who actually let teenagers have their licenses), I passed my driver's test, and now don't want to drive anything but a manual transmission. It was a sometimes painful seven month trek, but it was actually the closed time of our relationship.

She always wants me to figure things out for myself. If I want to go to college, I have to be the one to take the initiative in my studies and applications to get myself there. If I want to write a blog, go for it, but I have to be the one to actually sit down and write it. If I want to make money, go out and get a job. If I want to be successful, I have to go out there and do something about it. She's very pragmatic, but that has helped me infinitely in life. I know I'll survive when I'm independent because my aunt is the best planner of the century.

And my New Years Resolution is....?!

We all make them. We all break them. It's the pattern of life. Occasionally, one or two of us will get lucky and manage to not eat fast food for 365 days. A person might finally get the will power to quit smoking. But the big ones that everyone makes - I will not lie, I will not doubt - those no one can keep. It's asking yourself to defy human nature. It's simply not possible.

I don't mean to sound like a cynic, but every year I make a New Years Resolution that I know I'll break. The biggest is generally "I will start consistently doing my homework all the time." Unfortunately, I never am able to keep that one...

But this year, I'm going to try and defy the odds. I'm going to make a New Years Resolution to myself to keep my relatively realistic New Years Resolutions. The homework one is not included.

I'm not going to tell you what my resolutions are, however. A friend told me tonight, as I was trying to get him to write out his list of resolutions, that if you write it out, it's not a resolution. That if you tell other people, it's not a resolution. A resolution, he said, is something you decide for yourself. You don't need to write it down to remember it, and you don't need to tell other people to have them badger or make fun of you. You just resolve yourself and you do it. No questions asked, no doubts, and no post-its necessary.

I like that philosophy. The idea that not documenting a resolution could be the very factor that could make you keep it. That way it's not just a stereotypical ideal you won't follow through with. It's something you do because you want to do it for yourself. Not just because the New Year came around.

Well, cheers to you all. It looks like it's going to be yet another wild year...