this will be a better year

I don't even want to think about how shamefully I have neglected this project, and for just how long I have done so, so I won't. I do wish I could plead in my defence an unusually busy life, emotional turmoil, or a grave but non-threatening illness... only none of the above would be true, and being lazy is quite bad enough for the soul without lying as well. I can only promise that I will keep it up better this year. I do, really, want to document my year abroad by more than just drunken pictures and silly, cryptic Facebook statuses. See, I'll miss France when I come home this summer, I just know I will. You can't recreate the ol' oie de vivre in the middle of Galway when it's pissing down relentlessly and you don't have enough change for a pack of cigarettes. I have tried to once or twice, and it isn't the same. It rains in the Loire Valley too, but at least I can almost always afford fags.

As it is only the twelfth of January, I think now's as good a time as ever to set down my resolutions for the coming year. I don't believe deadlines apply to this sort of thing anyway (not that I know what they feel like anymore, because really, nobody in Université d'Angers cares if I live or die). One issue, however, rears its ugly head before I even begin. I haven't really thought of any, at all. So if the following are poorly-written, difficult to understand, appear in any way oxymoronical or indeed just moronical, please disregard it, secure in the strong likelihood that you don't need as much improvement as I do, and that every little helps.

Let's start at the very beginning

A very good place to start...

1. Stop smoking
1. Make a serious attempt to slow, reduce or otherwise impede fatal addiction to The Sweet Burn.

2. Stop saying 'sorry' for things that are not even your fault. Nine times out of ten, this is a result of wildly misplaced guilt for something else that you've done. Maybe stop doing that instead.

3. Stop looking in the mirror. You have grown in pretty much every direction you're ever going to, and your face is not going to change.

4. Stop buying clothes, make-up, jewellery, shoes and other accoutrements you will never wear. At twenty, you ought to have a relatively defined taste, so please for the love of God stop acquiring things that do not fit it. Or you, for that matter.

5. Don't bite your nails (particularly when deprived of cigarettes). Grow them and paint them nice colours instead.

6. Travel more, and speak more than the bare minimum of French whenever possible. You're living on the Continent, after all!

7. Acquire a nice, normal sleeping pattern. Maybe then you will do your college work and feel good about it.

8. Do not hold the people you admire up to ridiculously high standards that, being delightfully human, they will inevitably not attain. It never got anybody anywhere worth being.

9. Read, write, and moisturise every day. Trim your hair more often, too. (This is entirely too shallow to warrant its own paragraph break.)

10. Think just a little more before you speak, particularly if the forthcoming word vomit threatens to hurt or offend somebody.

11. In the event that situations or individuals bother you, maybe do something constructive about it instead of sticking your nose up in the air and taking what you believe to be the high road. Amy March from Little Women is a fantastic role model for nearly everything else in life, but she never inwardly wanted to throw herself against walls as you do. Or if she did, she was much more adept at hiding it.

12. Maybe just be more like Amy March, actually. Aside from minor foibles, she did very well for herself.

Don't worry, you're blonde, indolent and like the finer things in life too. You'll get there someday.