And in the caverns of tomorrow with just our flashlights and our love, we must plunge, we must plunge, we must plunge

Around this time last year, I committed myself to a personal alternative to New Years Resolutions that, in the spirit of self-acceptance and laziness, completely dispelled of the concept of self-improvement. Instead, I opted for a more realistic, effort-free exercise in testing the relationship between expectation and reality. I wrote down the various things I expected to happen in 2008, with the intention of reviewing my list on this New Years to rate, I guess, how prescient I was.

Lucky for me, my cheeky ideas, and my addiction to blogging, my little plan can now reach maturity:

Changes I'm Anticipating in 2008:
- Spending the summer either at an internship or at Not At The Barn
- Going to Hawaii
- Moving into my first apartment
- I'll probably buy a new pair of jeans at some point or something

In retrospect, this was a pretty stupid list. I knew as of December '07 that Dress Barn was permanently closing its doors due to a hilariously low sales record, so there was no danger of me returning there for the summer. I'd already signed the lease on my apartment and purchased tickets to Hawaii. All of these 'expectations' were undoubtedly, absolutely certain, pending some sort of natural disaster. And the one or two unanticipated things that cropped up during the year don't really make up for that striking lack of imagination. (Though my internship was a bit of a disappointment, it led me to a freelancing job that, while lucrative and stellar for my resume, made my life exponentially more stressful. I also officially decided to graduate early and to take on an honors research project in English.) Overall, this whole year-long anticipated exercise would have been a lot more interesting if I'd been daring enough to predict "sunshine" instead of "weather."

With experience belted and lesson learned, let's try this again.

Predictions of Varying Certainty for 2009:
- I'll send out applications for grad school for Fall 2010.
- I'll graduate, early, with research honors.
- Ian will graduate and become a mainland-dwelling graduate student, making our continued relationship closer and more long-distance at the same time.
- I'll start working at Friday's, will still work for the writing center and will likely sporadically continue to sub for Tommy's.
- I'll go to New York.
- The economy will be better by this time next year.

Let's go exploring!