Well, everybody, it's the new year. Yadda yadda yadda. Today I spent a number of hours in the Mudhouse drawing while Jessica did her semester schedule. I drew a medieval scene with a Leonard Nimoy lookalike, a river scene (not very good with only a purple gel pen), a mime, James Joyce (by accident: God help me, will I ever escape that man?), and two people kissing. Which reminds me of the only New Year's resolution I plan to make.

Next New Year's, I mean to kiss someone. I don't plan to be dating anyone, because I'm not particularly interested in dating. But kissing looks fun, and I'm tired of living vicariously. I'm also tired of telling myself that if I'm pushing sweet thirty and never been kissed, I must be hideous. So that little "tape" (as Dr. Phil calls it) is going out the window: goodbye, stirring the foot miserably waiting -- hello, taking the tiller lines and doing what I want to do. Which may not be anything different in effect, but agency is different in quality from passivity, and that's the action I'm going for. However, all bets are off if I'm not attracted to anyone that night.

Mind you, I'm not making a New Year's resolution to finish my novel. This may be counter-intuitive, but if something's really important I don't want to make a silly January 1st promise that I'm going to do it. It's important to me that I get a little romantic experience, but not so important that I rank it up there with my life's work. Doesn't that sound terribly fatuous? But I'm just going to keep recklessly on. It's a new year. George Macdonald says of God: "He will shake heaven and earth, that only the unshakable will remain" -- I feel that 2002 shook down a lot of things, leaving me to build unshakable things, so help me God. I figure that that will come together whether I do or don't make New Year's resolutions.

But kissing does look fun.