I'm so sorry! I have been terribly, terribly absent. Remember when I told you that I went in phases? Well this phase isn't much of a writing phase. It should be, really, because one of my resolutions was to better record the year of two-thousand-and-ten as it happens. Apparently my brain took that resolution to mean recording in photographs, when in fact it probably should be a mix of the two.

Anyhow, my resolutions. I should probably write them out, no? And then I have a bit of explaining to do.
- Surf at least once a week once I have my surfboard here, and do ab exercises and stretches every morning.
- Get good grades and actually do my schoolwork. (I'm not a total delinquent but there is certainly room for improvement).
- Meet someone new every week and make an effort to really get to know them, and everyone I'm already friends with, better.
- Be mostly-celibate.
- Drink more water.

This is going to get personal, so if you don't want the dirty details of my life, you might want to skip over this section.
Now I need to explain number 4 a little better. I like sex as much as (if not more than?) the next girl, and I am nowhere near about to give it up entirely. However, I want there to be conditions on the sex that I am having, and be having sex under certain specific circumstances.
Let me explain.
Over winter break, and over the past year, really, I've started to treat sex rather casually. Not to say that I've been having copious amounts of it, because I really haven't. I'm a pretty monogamous creature, I always, always, always use protection, and I can count my partners on one hand. After I lost my virginity, I was really set on only having sex with guys who were my boyfriend. I wanted to keep it that special sort of thing.
I feel like eventually, however, everyone sort of gets over that. A friend once said that "it takes a while after you lose your virginity to have meaningless sex," and it's definitely true. I feel like I've gotten to that point.

The problem is, I don't want to be at that point. I want it to be something special. And especially lately--maybe it's just the guys or maybe it's something that's changed about me, but I started to feel like an object. Like the guy in question who I was getting with was only talking to me because he wanted to have sex with me.
Now I know that wasn't necessarily true, but I can't change the way I feel about the whole thing. I don't like feeling like an object. I know my worth, and if we're going by the golden rule I deserve to be treated pretty well, the way I've treated others in my past relationships.
I don't like settling.
So I decided to do something about it. I've decided that I can still kiss boys, but I won't be having any sort of sex with them unless I know that they really care about me, and want to be with me for
me before they want to be with me for my body or whatever it is that they're after. I'm only going to be having sex with a boy who has earned it and who actually gives a shit about me.
Besides, sex is distracting, and complicated, and it tends to fuck a lot of things up.

Apart from that, my resolutions are pretty straightforward, and my life has been really great. Nothing like a good holiday season to cheer you up.
I hope the feeling carries through the rest of this quarter, and I hope the celibacy lasts longer than the 3 days it usually does when I try it out.
I am determined to be optimistic.
Firmly resolved and ever yours.