My new year's resolution is to be smart with money. This entails paying off my debts completely and not gaining any new ones. In conjunction with this I am beginning a modest savings plan. After the debts are paid off in full, I should have about five hundred dollars or so saved up. My plan is to take that money and begin a conservative investment strategy. I don't know investment from how to impress the ladies so I am going to need to talk to some sort of broker. I don't know, that is a bit in the future. But I've been coming to the realization that I have to plan for the future. If I keep living paycheck to paycheck and spending all my money I'll keep living that way for the rest of my life. It is time to break the cycle of poor money management. I owe it to my future self. Aside from that, I don't have much more to resolve. Anything else that I can think of is completely unrealistic. If I can do this money thing it will be big enough. I am looking forward to 2003 as being the year that I begin to grow up.

Oh yeah, my birthday is coming up in twenty days. I hope nobody is planning on throwing me a surprise party, boy, would I just hate that...please throw me a surprise party. I need it. No, don't really. I was just joking.

I've never been the type of person to promote myself on my birthday. My family knows when it is and so does at least one ex girlfriend but aside from that, my friends are basically clueless. I don't know if that is a good thing. I'm not blaming them. I am blaming myself. I keep almost everyone at a more than safe distance. I don't let enough people come into my life and get to know me, not the public me, because those things are, if not opposites, much different. The public me is quiet and not opinionated. The personal me is not. I have a public persona that I'm rarely aware of. I act distant when around people. I'm sure it comes off to many as aloofness but it isn't. It is just the standard self doubt. The standard worrying if I'm good enough to get to know. Happily, I'm not nearly as bad in that respect as I used to be. Unhappily, I'm still pretty bad. So I guess another secondary and continual resolution for the new year and beyond is to continue to creep out of my shell. If someone doesn't like me, then who gives a shit?

Who am I kidding? I do.