Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Beginning of the end

I don't know how it is in other industries, but December's a crazy busy time in academia, for students and faculty alike.

In spite of that, I love it. Sure, I'm usually stressed, sleep-deprived, and cranky, but there's an underlying eagerness to have it all done with. No matter how much I like a given set of classes, I thrive on novelty and the prospect of an upcoming new set of classes. I loved the prospect of new books, new material, new professors, and even a fresh batch of classmates as a student; now I look forward to the beautiful honeymoon period of a new semester, where students do their reading and assignments, but I also like having fresh slates to work with (even if the first set of writing I get always startles me with its... uh... roughness around the edges).

But I also like December for the same reason I love autumn--the end of a year and the prospect of a new one. I go through the motions of new year's resolutions, and like most, rarely accomplish them. I think they're just too ambitious. One of last year's ambitions was to find a balance between work and personal life; clearly, I haven't accomplished it. I thought I'd come to terms with God, but that relationship's still on the rocks. I thought I'd stop looking back at the what-ifs, and clearly, I haven't.

Such is life.

But I'm formulating next year's ambition. And it's simple. Oh, there are accompanying, unspoken goals that I would like to accomplish, and those are certainly bolder and more ambitious. But I think if I carry through with the relatively minor act I've been pondering for over three years, something that most people would probably do with little thought, the other things might just fall into place. It's a small act, but, I hope, a symbolic one. If--no, when I carry through, I'll blog about it ;).

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I've heard it said that once you do something regularly for about two weeks, it becomes habit. After a month of blogging every day, I actually started twitching to write this morning. I may become a more regular blogger after all.

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