2006-01-04 - 5:23 p.m.

This time of year, of course, there’s so much chin music about what resolutions you’re making. Being a changed person isn’t enough – you have to be a BETTER person, and apparently resolving to be more of an obsequious pedant, sending out vicious hate mail from behind the coward’s shield of anonymity or giving up charitable donations you don’t really mean are out. In the face of extreme peer pressure, I have decided to make 2006 the year I will do things that I otherwise wouldn’t, and just to shut up the mealy-mouthed doubters, I have already eaten dried fruit and paid to see musical theatre, so even at this early stage of the year, we’re looking at a radically different landscape. A decidedly gayer landscape, granted, but who’s to say the other activities won’t be stubble-sproutingly macho, like watching a new televised sport or French kissing a rodeo bull?

Sadly, being more professional in my, erm, professional life, losing weight and being more healthy are just blatant necessities by now, so it seems like a bit of a cop out to resolution-ise them.

I do really want to travel less, though. Or at least, travel smarter. Was it really necessary to spend three full days at that Hungarian music festival when I could have been exploring the countryside around Budapest, or go to look at random Apple Pie shops in the mountains of San Diego? Possibly not.

Oh, and I really want to do a class that isn’t a thinly-veiled exercise in meeting girls.