It’s 10:30am GMT at the Woodings Household in Lincoln, Lincs. England, and I am the only one awake at the moment. We sung in the New Year with Damian and Sarah. I learned that Auld Lang Syne is a Scottish song and that the New Year is more of a celebration than even Christmas for the Scots. Now I would like to go to Scotland for the New Year one year. 🙂

We watched a Scottish show that counted down to the New Year, and the presenter said something that I liked: “If there was anything you meant to do or anything you meant to say in 2003, it’s too late now. It’s the New Year.” I always considered the New Year as a time of hope and renewal. But I think I shall now also consider it a time of letting the past go. Whatever I had wanted to say or accomplish in 2003, well… it’s too late now. Let that go and proceed forward with a fresh mind and fresh heart.

Matt made a wish for the New Year and I made resolutions. Matt wished the things would go well for us– that 2004 would be a good year for us. I made a few preliminary resolutions:

1) Lose 1 lb each week. (I have enough thoughts on this subject for entire entry– not only on gaining weight, but on people’s perception of overweight people and the crippling psychological effect that has.)

2) Write 5 pages each day, Monday through Friday.

3) Clean 1 thing each day.

I also want to put something in there about training Lani, but I haven’t worked that one out yet. She needs to be trained because she is such a busy and inquisitive dog, and I also feel like her potential is being wasted. If I took the time to train her, she would be an amazing dog and we would have a tighter bond.

I talked with Matt’s friend, Simon, and his wife more on this trip to England. I really like those two. They are unpretentious, open, smile and laugh a lot, and like dogs. 🙂 If we ever did manage to visit England in the summer, I would like to visit them. They live in Derbyshire (that would be where Mr. Darcy comes from), and apparently it’s very peaceful and pleasant there.

And speaking of peaceful, Damian took us, as well as Allison and Ben, on his canal boat for an afternoon on the canals. It was so nice! I recommend that for anyone who is visiting England. Look up the canals and canal boats as an idea for something to do while you are here. It was peaceful and wonderful. You’ll have to learn how to operate the locks and the etiquette between the boaters on the canal, but that shouldn’t be too hard. We learned all that in an afternoon. And don’t be in a hurry. I think you can walk faster than canal boats travel, but it is very peaceful.

Finally, we met Ben’s girlfriend, Allison, on this trip, and Matt and I both really like her. If she is to be my sister-in-law one day, then I am very pleased. 🙂

Happy New Year. :))

I miss my old life sometimes…. my single life with my single friends doing silly single activities. I gained a lot when I got married, but I lost a lot too. I never missed my childhood. People reminisce about high school or being a kid or even college. The time that I ache for is the time after college but before I got married… the time with Gene.

But my life has changed now and this is where I am now. And time only goes forward, never backward.

So I am becoming more and more New Age-y. This is a major problem for me. Here’s an anology: say someone was raised Southern Baptist and their family is devout Southern Baptist. Now, this person has decided to become atheist. The family would freak and constantly preach to the poor soul.

Well, my situation is like the opposite of that. I come from a family of engineer-type skeptical atheists. Any kind of religion is right out. And New Age stuff is for crack pots.

So I’m having trouble coming to terms with my spirituality. It’s hard to diverge from your family… very hard.

I have been feeling swamped with information lately. It’s the web’s fault. The WWW is a massive library– a library beyond anyone’s imagination. A very disorganized library, but a library none the less.

Now, take a person like me who is interested in about a million different things, has the attention span of a two-year-old, and loves to read. The internet becomes both our best friend and our worst enemy. I spend hours reading and reading, my mind taking flights of fancy as I read about each new idea and each new thought. I feel exhilarated and lost at the same time.

It’s soooo much. Too much? No, I don’t think too much, but it is a lot and requires time to read. 🙂

So, I read some more of those 115 updates per minute. Everyone was like me– rambling on about their life. What they are going to do today, writing poetry, complaining about themselves…. Any one of those journals could have been my journal.

And then there was my journal entry that I had just written! It sounded exactly like the others. Yet another journal entry pondering the meaning of life and searching, rambling on in a self-absorbed way.

This is too weird. I feel nauseous (though that could be the caffiene).

I think online journal writers are like dog breeders. I’ve met several dog breeders in the past few months and most of them are the same personality type: bossy, think their opinions are the only right ones, come off as rude when discussing their opinions in dog-related conversations. I came to the conclusion that a certain personality type is attracted to dog breeding. Don’t get me wrong, these breeders love dogs and are ethical breeders, but their interpersonal skills are certainly lacking. If a law student married an engineering student, their child would be a dog breeder.

Anyways, I’ve now decided that a certain personality type is attracted to online journal writing. We are introspective, a bit depressed, love to write, love to write with biting wit even more, creative, a bit lost.

And young. A lot of the online journal writers are very young. Of course, they call the online journal “a blog” which sounds infinitely cooler. But are blog writers just younger versions of online journal writers? Just as introspective and creative, but they are introspective about different things that are age-specific?

One of the entries I read was by a college student. She was philosophizing about herself, saying she took herself far too seriously and that she was now “over” herself. While I was reading that entry, I thought “Oh yeah, I remember going through that psychological phase in college.”

I hope I find my spiritual enlightment soon… all this uncertainty– these painful questions without answers– is taking an emotional toll. I’m exhausted.

Holy macaroni. And how many of those updates do you think mirror this update: talking about how many updates there are per minute?

We’re massive! Truly massive! The human population is a great lumbering beast.

I thought I had more to say, but who am I saying it to? You see, I read about 20 of those 115 updates and I once again feel lost. I wonder why our individuality is so important to us.

….. where is the answer….. what exactly am I looking for….

I haven’t posted in soooooooo long. To be honest, I’m not sure who reads this or how often. Am I posting for myself? Am I posting for the random person who stumbles onto this journal? Am I posting for my friends? I’ve never answered this question with any satisfaction. I have yet to understand the lure and need for the online journal, although I obviously feel it in myself. Maybe humans just need to send their voices out into the oblivion in the hope that we will connect. After all, we are, by nature, sociable creatures. But I still think vanity plays a part in the online journal as well.

I have been playing “catch up” as we all seem to do. And of course, I haven’t caught up, nor will I ever. There is too much to do in life and too little time. But I shall play “catch-up” until the day I die. Always reaching for a goal in front of me. If I ever do reach it, then I need to set the goal higher so I have something to reach for, something to dream about.

I have a new puppy. I got her about a month after Savannah died. Matt was really sweet and let me make every single decision when picking the new puppy. I choose the breed (German Shepherd Dog), choose the puppy out of the litter, and named her (Lani). She is six months old now. And she is high maintenance. I had read a lot about GSDs before getting her and every book had the same warning: GSDs are very smart and as an owner, you must occupy their mind. They will get up to mischief simply because their mind is twirling and buzzing and they have no occupation.

And sure enough, Lani’s mind is going about 100 miles an hour. I’ve never had such a busy and inquisitive dog. I figured out why people teach their GSDs tricks. It’s not to impress people. It’s just to give the poor bored dog something to do with its overactive mind. GSDs need to learn. Just as greyhounds need to run or they will go crazy, GSDs need to learn or they go nuts. They are a very interesting breed. I’ve never had a dog with a natural imperative before.

Other than that, it’s the same old same old. Trying to get the house organized, trying to get our finances in order, trying to ride out the recession as best we can, trying to keep my husband happy, trying to keep myself happy, trying to have a baby, trying to complete a novel.

In The Princess Bride, Wesley tells Buttercup “Life is pain” and I’ve been reading that philosophical statement a lot in other places lately, so I’ve been dwelling on that idea. But I don’t think life is pain. Life is promise and hope. Life can be difficult sometimes but with open eyes, dear loved ones, and a bit of caffeine, you can find the pulse of the earth and the promise that comes from simply being alive.

I’ve been getting really “spiritual” lately, but, being agnostic and having a real problem with the idea of a god, my spirituality is like the frayed end of a rope– chaotic and leading nowhere. But we’ll see where all the philosophical ramblings in my head lead me. It feels exactly the same as struggling with a difficult math problem. I’m staring at it and playing with it and rearranging the equation, but I’m having trouble finding the answer. It’s there somewhere but I can’t see it.

Hmmmm…. this has been a strange entry. But that’s the mood I’ve been in lately.

I’ve been very quiet lately. I’ve been writing!! Yes, I’m writing a romance/scary small novel (novella?). It’s not as “deep” as the other one I was writing and is consequently much easier to write, but probably not as revealing to read. I’ll continue to write the other one, but that is a much harder novel to write. I’ll post the link to the fluff scary romance as it comes along. But remember, it is a romance, and as such, hits all the romance goalposts. If you don’t like romances, you probably won’t like this one. Although there are ghosts!! How can anyone not like a ghost story? 🙂

Have you seen the illustrations for Hikaru no Go? They are very cute. I haven’t read the manga or seen the anime, but the illustrations are very tempting.

I’ve decided that if a manga has beautiful illustrations, then it will still be very successful even if the story isn’t that great. Look at Tanemura Arina, Clamp, and Katsura Masakazu, just to name a few. Their stories could be utter crap, and people will still devour the manga because the drawings are so beautiful.

So using IRC to share files is very cool but deadly slow. What I’ve discovered: I think it’s very easy to host an fserve from your home with just a junk computer and a modem/DSL connection. So there are a ton of fserves out there. There are hundreds of channels with hundreds of fserves listed on them. So you cruise the channels, and then search the servers, looking for the file you want.

It’s very very cool. Right now, I’m downloading my very first anime digisub .avi file off IRC. We’ll see how it comes out.

While learning about all this IRC stuff and digital media, I feel like Neo when he first woke up after he left the Matrix.

“What’s wrong with my eyes?”

“You’ve never used them before.”