Not quite the right foot

It's not all that unusual for me to be up at 1AM, but today's reason is a little surprising - I didn't really get up until 5:30PM yesterday, so I've really only been active for 6 or 7 hours. No, it wasn't a hangover ... instead, it was a sore throat the likes of which has not visited me for many years, as a result of too much yelling and too much huffing and puffing in the cold air.

It wasn't how I planned to start the New Year. I wanted to spend today in reflection, Scripture reading, prayer and rest, not sleeping to avoid the fact that it hurt to talk or swallow. In retrospect, I kind of wish I'd stayed at home last night. I had some fun conversations, and danced a little, and ate some good food, and people said I looked well. But I feel let down, like I wanted to get more out of the evening than I did. Is some of this partly reflective of the fact that my New Year's kiss was a pity kiss from my friend's date? Probably. Or the fact that I spent the latter part of the evening at a bar full of gay men who, while extremely complimentary of my outfit, were otherwise uninterested in my smoking hotness? Probably that also.

I am starting to think that I'm not much of a party girl anymore; they just aren't as fun as they used to be. I like drinking, but not for drinking's sake; I like talking to people, but not a bunch of strangers in a crowded room; and I like dancing, but nobody dances much at white people parties. (Yes, I said it. So sue me.) I'm definitely better at parties that are mostly made up of my friends, which isn't surprising given my nature. And I think the bigger kinds of parties trigger some expectation held over from my 20s that a party should have some hook up potential; this is troublesome because a) I'm trying not to do that anymore, and I don't want to be tempted by the mindset, and b) no one seems to want to hook up with me anyway, which just makes me feel unloved.

I did go out last night with the goal of "just having some fun," but I think I needed to define that phrase and my expectations a little better, because what it meant in the back of my mind was that I wanted to look awesome, go out and get picked up, and reclaim a tiny portion of myself as a sexual being before 2007 ended. But what's really fun for me are the kinds of evenings I had last week with my sister and nephew, where we played games and watched silly musicals and ate fun food until we crashed on the floor of the living room ... which is exactly what my family did last night down in VA. Part of me wishes that I hadn't had to come back to MA and watch over the cats, because otherwise I would have stayed through the weekend and spent New Year's with them.

It's not that I only want to be with my family; I'd have had fun doing the same kinds of activities with my friends up here. But I guess I didn't really think about what I wanted enough to organize it myself, so I just went along with the activities that presented themselves. It wasn't all bad - really! - and I had fun with the friend I went out with. I also got to meet someone who I think will be one of my instructors in grad school, and that was cool. And I was mostly having a good time while I was out ... so maybe it's just the aftermath I regret, and not the evening itself. Still, I wish I'd entered the year with a somewhat different mindset, in a way that prepared me for what I want this year to be like. Because I am definitely hoping for a 2008 that is much better than 2007.