Happy New Year, World!

So a goal for myself in being here (here being my parents’ house in University Place, WA), was/is to write. I know I have a lot to say, but doesn’t everybody? I know I’m a decent writer, a good communicator, but what do I have to show for it? An NYU Masters degree from a program I often think wasn’t too worth it, with not even a thesis to show for 3 semesters of debt? But I suppose that’s just me being pessimistic.

It’s the new year, and I haven’t made any resolutions. (How is this week any different from last week anyway?) I’m notorious for making goals I never keep. But that doesn’t mean I can’t attempt another one, right? So here goes... starting today I’m going to try to blog every day until I find myself no longer living at my parents’ house. There will be no parameters, just a blog post every day. Woo-hoo! So here goes...

Today, aside from continuing to fight a hellish stuffy head cold I’ve had for 5 days, I’ve been thinking about the state of the world. Ha ha! Just a little thing like that, right? I watched a video sent to me by a friend about how both the wealth and life expectancy of people, pretty much across the world, have increased significantly in the last two hundred years. Incredible, huh? I want to embrace that optimism, I really do. I want to shove the statistics into the faces of all those cynics I know. But, thing is, I’m one of the cynics too. My educated mind asks, do those income amounts reflect inflation? Is a longer life expectancy something we even want, in a world where we consume resources like they’re never-ending? Our quality of life may be increasing, but at what cost? Will we even have an earth we can live on?

But somehow, the hopeful idealistic activist in me can’t help but want to work to change the world. Maybe it’s naive, but I think I can make a difference. Or at least I think it’s worth trying, because what else am I going to do? So I’m going to search for the most fulfilling work that helps people, no matter where it takes me. I’m going to let myself be brought to tears by organizations like Falling Whistles, and believe that the money they raise is really helping children. And not imposing some sort of western we-can-solve-the-world’s-problems mentality⎯ damn, can’t keep that educated cynicism down.

Ah well, we all got to work from somewhere, right?