Friday was the day I decided to, uh, pretend it was Monday and start over. I made bread, an entire small loaf of which I had to throw away because the pan had a hole in it that I didn’t notice until I’d put it in a water bath to rise. The other two tiny loaves had not turned into squishy bread sponges and baked into dense crusty rolls. I hadn’t baked in more than a year, and I hadn’t realized that it was possible to miss beating up bread dough.

I’ve been eating eggs and potatoes in restaurants by myself, sitting by windows, watching the rain, watching cars pass on the street. The time alone with small plates and cups of hot water waiting for tea bags lets pieces of the pieces fall somewhere close to into place -

It’s hard to for me to be happy with the fact that I’ve wasted time if I have. I don’t want to come to the conclusion that goals I have might have been goals I settled on just because I was told that I needed to have them. Coming to terms with the idea that maybe the person I have been isn’t the person that I am or have wanted to be or

you know, any of that

isn’t something that will come easy, but I have plenty of flour in the kitchen.

First, there was the time in ninth grade when my English teacher made me stand by my desk so she could call me a “loser who would never do anything with her life.” This was in response to me asking if the field trip to see a play I had already seen was mandatory. Later, in the guidance counselor’s office, she said expressing different opinions wasn’t a good thing for the Honors class and I was kicked out of the Honors program.

Then, one of my friends and some of her friends went to a therapist working with the school and told him I was going to kill myself. I was not then and never have even considered killing myself. The therapist, a man I had never met, called my parents without talking to me and told them I “needed help.”

Some months later, someone overheard my friend’s mother talking to another friend’s mother about how I was such a bad influence, despite the fact that in a community where teenagers openly drink, smoke, rub snuff, have sex in middle school, I hadn’t done any of those things and did not, in fact, kill myself.

Yesterday I decided to take a leave of absence from college, hopefully only until the fall semester. If I end up taking lunch breaks out of the office I’m going to work in, I’ll be covering the same tracks I made originally to annoy my friends’ parents because I knew they congregated in the town’s restaurants.

I really wish I liked pizza; I could just order that.
I really wish I’d thought about this – or I wish this wouldn’t have been a factor in the decision if I had.

I spent a lot of 2011 in “places,” “learning,” “being social,” “having fun,” or “helping people,” and “being weird.”

I don’t make resolutions, really. Since childhood, I’ve known myself as kind of the opposite of a promise-keeper. I liked to knock people over when we were the only two people in the room and blame it on someone else. I liked to claim I couldn’t remember my resolutions when the list was folded neatly in my back pocket.

But!

In 2012, I think I’ll:

1. Continue to listen to good music
2. Continue to listen to bad music
3. Continue to write mediocre poetry and rend my garments when it isn’t mediocre enough
4. Decide what to do about my “education” (it’s hard to be educated when you plug your ears and run when you disagree with something – everything – someone says. I could make that a non-resolution, but I don’t know how to “not go into it in public” if I do that)
5. Continue to spend excessive amounts of time in my car in order to learn, be social, have fun, help people, and be weird.

This year bothers me already, though. The idea of turning 25 is kind of irritating. I’m only placing any significance on it because other people are. I can, what, rent a car at 25? I’m supposed to be grown up now?

Grown up into what social climate?

(PS: Here’s a more fun thing that I just remembered that makes me love college: A lit class I took a year ago went to California and was written about in the LA Times this week. My pictures from the trip are here.)