I ate six tacos just now. I will likely shit out this piece of 2013 sometime in 2014.

I bought some bottles of Andre after I got off work this evening, bought them from the liquor store a block away from my house in Bushwick. On my way out the door, a happy family came barreling into the store, led by their dog pulling on his leash. I stepped over the dog, over a little girl, and there was an energy out on the streets. The sun had recently set. There were still colors in the sky, fading streaks of daylight, of 2013, the year on its way out. We all celebrate a chance for something new, an ability to wipe the slate clean, forgetting in our glee about resolutions and new and imagined better lives that time is marching on, that we are closer and closer to death, that another year has gone by in which we didn't live entirely as we wanted to.

Vendors were selling glowsticks, various noisemakers, and 2014 glasses.

This past year was far better than the previous year. I feel secure. There are days when I feel confident. There are days when I feel sexy. I am 32 and I think I look better at this age than I did at any other age. I have lived in this apartment out in Bushwick for the entirety of this past year and it feels more and more like home. I have spent a lot of time at the gym this year and that has contributed a great deal to my happiness. It makes me mentally happy to leave a gym sweaty, hungry, and sore.

I saw Rome this year. I saw Istanbul. I saw Puerto Rico. There are so many more places I need to see and hopefully I will be able to get to some of those places in the coming year.

I started school, took control of my life in a way that felt really fucking good after drifting along through various vaguely shitty jobs since moving to New York a decade ago. I am going to school for copywriting and hopefully that will lead out of the wilderness I suddenly found myself adrift in after years and years of partying and going to work and partying.

I am trying. And that's all you can do. Just wake up and keep going. I have been dreaming about LA more and more and am trying to arrange some pieces on the board to place myself there by year-end. I want romance and I don't. I want to eat burritos and tacos and drink beer and read and write and learn Spanish and get a job in advertising and be kinder, nicer, more open. I want to be a really good human being. There are ways, big ways, in which I fail, ways in which I do so every day. I am going to keep trying in this new year. I am dying, yes, but you are too. We are all dying together. Let's do so as beautifully as possible and let's really celebrate this time we have here by being as happy and as good and as everything we tell ourselves on January 1st that we are going to be.