7/8.

In retrospect, it is hardly surprising that I have chosen New Year's Eve as the "right moment" to start blogging again. For someone which has an irresistible (if hugely superfluous) penchant for the theatrical, it is hard to resist the boundless rhetorical potential that an occasion like New Year's Eve exudes.

Much of this rhetorical potential stems from the fact that New Year's Eve is a particular day where you begin to anticipate the future that lies ahead. There is a certain ethereal charm about today, because New Year's Eve represents a threshold between not-so distant memories, and a tentative, but undeniably exciting future. The confluence of these two elements at a single point in time makes for a heady brew of bittersweet reminiscence and unbridled hope for the future.

Of the above 2 emotions, the former is basically an incoherent outburst of regret about things well past -- emoing, in essentials. The latter treads the fine line between such incoherent outbursts and an objective, rational evaluation of what lies ahead. Hence, at the risk of sounding like a raving idiot feeling too much angst for his own good, I shall seek to explore in greater depth the second option.

It is relevant here to talk a bit of the nature of time. As much as this delineation between years is (if you think about it in a cynical and mechanical fashion) an artificial and consequently irrational construct, the fact that our lives are built around this supposedly "artificial" conception of time forces us to construct realities within such constraints.

One reality that is particularly pertinent to yours truly (and most other readers of this blog, I trust) is the school term. The start of every school term on the 2nd of January represents a multitude of opportunities for students, and a chance for us to exploit them to the maximum. We makes New Year resolutions, promising to be a better person, and start fulfilling these promises with much passion and energy once the term begins. And yet, as the year goes by, fatigue will always contrive to creep in, we start to see failures, and finally, we corner ourselves in a sort of half-defeat, fighting on because it just doesn't make sense to just give up, but doing so with the grudging acceptance that our real dreams, the ones that seemed imminently possible just a few months back, have all but evaporated.

Because of such pessimism, I am a bit skeptical about making New Year resolutions. What, though, is a New Year without something to look forward to? Especially given the fact that I will be entering a new school, making new friends, it seems just a tad misanthropic for me to stop making promises, however empty, to myself. So just for the sake of it, I will continue to hope.

One promise I ought to make to myself, perhaps, is that I ought not to botch up the start of the school year in anyway. One reason why dreams disappear after a while is because you take a wrong step, and screw things up before they even begin. This is a prospect that is dangerously imminent, especially since I am entering completely uncharted waters by stepping into junior college. Despite the proximity between my alma mater and my new school in both name and location (and elitist sentiment), the dimensions and workings of both institutions are vastly different.

The social workings I will have to adapt to are a particular problem for me. Those who know me (and for that matter, those who have tried to know me) will understand that I am not a social animal. Quite the converse, I am reserved and impeccably odd in front of strangers. I thus do not enjoy making new friends, and adapting to new social circles in any way. And yet, junior college is essentially one massive ecosystem of people waiting to be recognized, to be understood, to be befriended. The process of getting to know such people is complicated by the fact that, having spent the most part of puberty in a single-sex environment, junior college lends the impression of being an ostensibly sexual place, for want of a better word. I am thus confused (and maybe a bit bemused) about how I ought to act.

This is where the chameleon in me begins to emerge, and I start to think about adapting to the situation as it calls for. The only problem is, do I know what the situation is in the first place? Do I wish to be the quiet, scholarly nerd, or the outgoing funny-man with a truckload of bad jokes to boot? Or should I instead shut up and not care about anything at all?

Instantly, I feel inclined to apologize for my behavior. For one, I have descended into the "incoherent babbling" that I so intended to avoid. Secondly, and more importantly, I am beginning to feel like a hypocritical, two-faced sycophant for even contemplating the guise of the chameleon, and I am disgusted with myself. Without going so far as to say I have had a sudden epiphany, I have suddenly realized that all I have to do in 2008 is sort of... enjoy myself.

In truth, the only real new year resolution I have to make is to make 2008 a year to remember. Looking through the entirety of this blog has made me realize that I take myself too seriously, and thus try to refashion myself into something I am not. Just like the school term is forced to work around the year, my emotions, and even my persona, fluctuate according to what I perceive to be injustice or idiocy, or quite simply, an artificial burden of expectation. 2008, then, must see a new me emerge, someone who defines himself as what he is, and not what he ought to be.

I am already 26 minutes into 2008. And I trust the next 525,934 of them will be memorable ones to come.