Happy New Year, a week late but nothing short.

They say that one's year is dictated by how she rings it in. If that's the case, I'm not sure what to make of my year to come. For the last couple of days of 2010 and the first several of '11, I've been experiencing the kind of sickness that encompasses one's head in a bubble of congestion and makes everything outside that bubble seem like slow-motion cinema of surreal proportions.

But during the last couple of days, I have experienced this shattering lucidness in the bubble. Light has seemingly been drawn on matters as large as my purpose here (yeah, like on Earth) and as small as my love for carbohydrates (yes, I do love bagels!). And everything has seemed extraordinarily wonderful and shiny and new since then. I realize that what I am experiencing is likely nothing more than shortness of oxygen to the brain. But, oh, how glorious the high.

And where I'd had zero New Year's resolutions before, I now have several.

1. I want to learn! I'm not done learning I realized in the car yesterday (whether or not I should be driving is agreeably disputable). I want to read. I want to take classes. I want to make up for the last ten years of brain stagnancy.

2. I want to eat bagels! As previously stated, I have rediscovered a love for the chewy, soft circles of carbohydrate that I've denied myself for many years. But I love bagels. And I want to have things that I love. I want to have them every day. I want to savor them in beautiful parks. I want to pull over on the side of the road to eat them with the concentration they deserve. Sometimes, I want to eat them in bed with an open jar of peanut butter. Life is short, and I want my short life to be full of bagels!

3. I want to appreciate life! It is beautiful out, the weather in Los Angeles this week. It is sunny and the air is fresh and the whole city feels like it's full of the greatest possibilities. I am sick, but I'm not that sick. I am a little down in the dumps for being stuck in a perpetual state of feverish looniness, but life could be worse. I wish I had more money, but I could always have less. Basically, life kicks ass but it's so damn short and I'm turning 30 in 2011 and you better believe I'm about to start kicking the 2nd third of my lif'e's butt--this year and then the next and hopefully the year after that one too.

So, a long and drawn out and much belated Happy New Year from me to you. Being stuck inside this congestion bubble has opened my mind up to the wondrous all around me. I hope you can see it too. May you feel a little bit of the manic joy I've felt this week from a headcold all year round.

xo * Jessie