She was also a writer. When I was born, she wrote me a poem — her first granddaughter. My uncle, in high school at the time, illustrated it. It has hung in every room I’ve lived in. I wanted to read it at her funeral, but that is not the way military funerals roll, in my experience. So I will share it here.

There is a place where each of us stays
Separate.
It is most holy ground.
When one draws near, we tremble, because it is
Inviolate.

–Patricia Waller, December 1978

Rest in peace, Grandma. Thank you for everything.

When I was a kid — 10? 11? — I had a book of magic instructions for kids. It was cute: making yourself fairy wings and doing spells. One of the “spells” suggested that you write three wishes on a piece of paper and then hide it to open a few months later. Would your wishes come true?

I loved the idea. I’m a ritual fiend, and New Year’s Eve is my birthday in addition to being that of the Western world, so somehow the wishes became my New Year’s ritual. I’ve opened last year’s wishes and written next year’s every New Year’s Eve for more than 20 years.

In junior high, I usually wanted a better relationship with my parents and “to lose weight,” which was a sad proxy for “to become pretty and less awkward so boys will like me.” As I got older, the wishes got more specific: this boy, this college, this fight with a friend. In 1999 I wished for the power to stay on so the world wouldn’t end.

There are rules. Personal wishes only, because otherwise I’d feel so guilty I’d wish for variations on world peace every year, and that’s not the point of this exercise. (1999 was an exception.) Only wishes that might realistically come true that year — nothing crazy like winning a million dollars or finding alien life. As often as not, they’re aspirations or goals more than wishes: create better work-life balance, say, or find a volunteer project.

I’ve always been a person who takes the long view. (Though I’m not sure now whether the wishes tradition appealed to me because it took a long view, or whether years of wishes influenced me to think that way. Probably some of both.) But I am also a person with a lot of fears. The wishes are a way to take those fears and cast them into the long view — to get perspective on them. A year from now, will I still care about this? Will it be resolved, one way or another?

Typically, one wish comes true, one wish doesn’t, and one is a complete wild card that I don’t even remember making and couldn’t have guessed until I opened it. Often the wish that doesn’t come true turns out to be one I don’t care about anymore anyway; I’ve grown past it. That’s the beauty of the long view. Sometimes I’m not so lucky, and one wish fails to come true and causes a lot of pain in the process. This is one of those years.

But now I get to wish again. And as this ritual has taught me, all kinds of things can change in a year. Happy New Year, everyone.

Unfortunately, I have this Christmas Curse. Even if nothing bad has happened the rest of the year, the week or two before Christmas is 55% likely to feature the breakup of a serious relationship and/or a health crisis. This seems statistically implausible, but I assure you it is accurate (sample size: 11 post-college Decembers). I realized this year that Christmas is somewhat hopelessly tied to moping about for me, and 2011 sure wasn’t shaping up to buck this trend, so I’m skipping Christmas.

Whoa, what? Christmas is not a holiday one can just skip in this country. The pressure to Celebrate is so great that it’s not avoidable, even if the holiday itself has no real meaning for you or your family. Even people who really don’t observe Christmas at all are visiting their folks, because they get the time off. Restaurants and bars are closed. Volunteer gigs are few and fill up fast, because everybody wants to get a last bit of goodwill in.

But what’s the point of being Jewish if you can’t ignore Christmas with a movie and Chinese food? you ask, and you’re right, but I’ll be doing it alone.*

So I am reaching for the same solace I’ve used on many a lonely Valentine’s Day: gleeful bitterness. I am collecting Terrible Christmas Things. Picture me dressed as the Ghost of Christmas Future, carrying one of Your Neighborhood Librarian’s Advil Calendar cocktails (most of which are the opposite of terrible, but the Crystal Lake Surprise looks promising).

Or dressed as Krampus, which is pretty much the ultimate Terrible Christmas Thing and is therefore my new favorite thing in the world. Christmas should be much more like Halloween.

Cracked’s list of The 11 Most Unintentionally Creepy Christmas Ornaments is pretty quality. Should you be in a gift-giving mood, I’m particularly fond of the screaming larva baby.

And of course there’s Jonathan Coulton’s classic “Chiron Beta Prime,” performed by my favorite ASL singer Stephen Torrance (even if he does misspell “soylent”):

More Terrible Christmas Things tomorrow!

*This is where I feel compelled to add that my family and I love each other very much. My dad even offered to fly here for the day. So I am alone by choice, but given the situation, it’s really best for all concerned.

(If you were a pre-teen girl 15-20 years ago, you might have read a lot of The Baby-Sitters’ Club series. If not, you didn’t miss out, really, but so you can follow along at home: Super Specials were the longer books chronicling the baby-sitters’ group travel adventures.) I call the mystery-solving storyline in Alaskan Adventure! The romances and friendships with offbeat, chronically ill children are all yours, ladies.

Assuming I don’t get eaten by a bear or starve to death on the tundra a la Into the Wild, I’ll be back on the internets in a week!

I had big plans for some new additions in honor of the anniversary — which was, um, actually 2 weeks ago, on Valentine’s Day — but February turned out to be a more complicated month than anticipated.

Anyway, expect some shiny new stuff ’round about the end of March, when I’ve had two whole weeks of spring break to party, procrastinate, and give my blog some love.

In the meantime, some nostalgia. Back in the late 90s, when the web was young, we were so excited about “web journals” and other ways to use the internet for real personal connection. Now, of course, the word “blog” isn’t just some silliness Peter came up with on his website. Oversharing is standard. The lines between private, public, and professional are blurring more and more. The internet is for crass commercialism and research and blah blah blah, but even more than it was in 1999, it’s about people sharing their thoughts for free. (For good and for ill.)

No one will care about this except me (and Jesse), but… what’s my circa-1999 “blog roll” (er, list of bookmarks) up to now?
Fray: True Stories and Original Art
Jesse Chan-Norris
Adam Rakunas
Peter Merholz
Derek Powazek
Molly Steenson
Lance Arthur
Magdalena Donea

And some snapshots from the Wayback Machine of things I loved back in the day:
Maxi
Water
Colors

What were you doing on the web 10 years ago?

5 Things I Was Doing 10 Years Ago:

• Attending a rockin’ New Year’s party at the home of jcn, Latemodel, and some other people whose URLs I don’t know.
• Turning twenty. (Eeep!)
• Teaching myself to cook in my first apartment, a little studio in Providence. Fave recipe of that era, from RSB: stir-fry tofu, canned sweet potatoes, and fresh ginger.
• Taking a year off from college to work, do the obligatory month of bumming around Europe, and figure out how to force myself to finish my degree.
• Starting this blog. (We called them “web journals” then.)

5 Things On My To-Do List Today:

• Figure out what to bring to my work Yankee swap.
• Write more reviews.
• Read the 3 graphic novels I picked up at the library today. The end is in sight!
• Buy new glasses with what’s left of my flexible spending account. Man, what a rip-off.
• Oh, you said today? Finish this and go to bed!

5 Snacks I Love:

• apples and peanut butter
• Taza Mexican chocolate
• nachos
• ice cream, the wackier the flavor the better
• pretty much anything that involves cheese

5 Things I’d do if I was a Millionaire:

• Correct the grammar in this meme. It should be “…if I WERE a millionaire.” What’s that you say? Grammar snobbiness is free? Hey, bonus!
• Buy a gorgeous condo in the ‘ville.
• Pay off my grad school debt. Boring, but true.
• Invest it somewhere that my friends and family can borrow from if/when they’re in financial trouble. (Like, say, if there’s a gigantic economic collapse. Not that that would ever happen.)
• Give most of it away, largely to clean, renewable energy research, and local groups that a) support sustainable food, or b) improve public education.

5 Places I’ve Lived:

• Silver Spring, MD
• Winter Park, FL
• Columbia, SC
• two different suburbs of Pittsburgh, PA
• Providence, RI

5 Jobs I’ve Had:

• Baby-sitter at a Unitarian Universalist church
• Web designer / IT intern / general computer lackey at a sensor manufacturing company
• college tech support student manager (ie., getting paid to goof off with my friends and become very familiar with everything popular on the internet circa 2000)
• the boss of the people doing the job above, only at a different college
• financial aid / registrar punching bag

I’m not tagging this time. But anyone who wants to spend way too long answering all these questions, I’d love to read your answers!