I don't need permission, make my own decisions. That's my prerogative.

I think it is safe to say this will be the only time I ever take a post title (much less any life advice or inspiration) from a Bobby Brown lyric. Unfortunately, when I decided to ignore what I wrote yesterday about not making any silly resolutions, that old late 80s gem was the first thing to come to mind.

The thing is, when I perused my archives to recap what I did in 2007, I realized just how much I've come to rely on this blog to keep track of what I'm thinking or struggling with or enjoying at any given time. I haven't written in an old fashioned paper journal more than a handful of times since I started blogging, so if there's something I want to remember, this is probably the place to put it. So for my benefit and reference, if not for yours, here is my list. Shit I need to do, dammit, New Year or not. Wish me luck.

• Get fucking organized already. Banish the clutter I am drowning in throughout my house and purge the crap I really no longer need. I think there may be something to those claims that a cluttered space creates a cluttered mind and a cluttered life, and my head could definitely use some clarity and clean-sweeping. So I'll start with my home and hopefully peace of mind will follow.
  
  
• Revisit the budget I created (and subsequently mostly ignored) three years ago. Figure out how much money I'm supposed to have left after all my bills are paid each month and where the hell that money is actually going. Make sincere (sincere!) efforts to spend and not-spend accordingly.
  
  
• Take a vitamin and a calcium supplement EVERY day. I did better at this after resolving to do it last year, but the result still probably averaged out to only once every three or four days. Starting now, I'm going to take my friend Jamie's advice and implement a calendar marking-off system to remind me, and I am going to finally DO this simple thing, dammit. It's that or start eating my vegetables, and frankly, we all know that's not going to happen.
  
  
• Meet Lara in real life and in person. Of course, I would also love to meet all my other fabulous real and semi-imaginary blog friends, but Lara is the one I've been in contact with most closely and consistently, so she's the one I'll specify. There are some weeks when Lara actually knows more about what's going on in my life than the good friends in my own area code do, and while that means many things, one important thing it means is that we really must share a bottle (or two) of wine and play Boggle together. Soon.
  
  
• Get more sleep. This one will be particularly laughable to any of my aforementioned real-life, same-area-code friends--the people who know better than to call me before 10:00 on weekend mornings because they know sleeping late (very late, by most of their standards) is the one thing that reliably makes me happier than any other thing in my life. The fact is I do not get enough sleep, though... not on weeknights, anyway, and if I actually turned off my TV or computer or put down my book at a reasonable hour on nights when I have to set an alarm, I'd probably be much more likely to get up when the hour's in the single digits on days when I don't.
  

It seems I'm already off to a bad start on that last one, as it's creeping up towards midnight, and putting on my flannel pants when I got home from work several hours ago is the only thing I've done that qualifies as getting ready for bed at this point. Better luck on that tomorrow, I suppose. Yawn.