Hey there adoring fans (Becky Alexander)!

It’s January.  A time to reflect on the year before.  To make fun goals for the new year ahead like “I will finally go to the MTV beach house this Spring Break,”  or “This is the year I get back to my birth weight”.  The time to read that People Magazine with the fat people turned skinny on the cover, and for sitcoms to start adding sexual tension to two characters who ordinarily would never fall in love, but now have feelings for each other only to be revealed on the big Valentine’s Day episode (I’m talking to you Mindy Khaling…I thought you were better than that).  The time to bundle up by the warm fire with some delicious pinot noir…and have a panic attack.

January hits the trifecta of panic for me.  For 31 days I’m filled with the kind of anxiety where your abdomen is so tight that nothing seems to properly digest between your crotch bone, and your boob mole.   Mix that with the kind of depression where your dog worries about the purple umbrella with eyeballs that seems to be following you around, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of how I’m feeling right now.

The trifecta is this:

January 1st = new Year,

January 3rd = my birthday,

January 4th = the anniversary of the day I moved to New York City.

Hi.  My name is Sarah.  It’s 2014.  I’m 31.  I’ve been living in New York City for 9 years.  And this thought has been running through my mind 900 times a day since January 1st…

Don’t bother.  You’re not going to tell me anything that I don’t already know, or at least anything that my kindle full of self-help books haven’t already pounded into my psyche… “Turn that frown upside down!  What a gift you are to this world!  You know, there will never be anyone else exactly like you on this planet…ever!?! How amazing and beautiful is that!?!  I’m sure your ovaries aren’t drying up minute by minute!  Come on, let’s go meditate and exercise.  It’ll make you feel better!”

I know all of this is true, and come February, I’ll be back to my old cheery, “let’s see what this magnificent universe has to offer me,” self, but until the clock strikes 11:59:59 on January 31st, I’m going to continue waking up in the middle of night with these visions…

and how could we forget…

But just like they say in your local bulimia meet up group, “what goes down must come up!”

The good thing about my January of HELL is that I’ve decided to use this anxious ridden bout of depression to inspire my resolution for 2014

No more being a victim.

If you’ve been following my blog, you know that I’ve got a pretty go-get-’em, manifest-and-it-will-come, be-positive-and-positive-things-will-happen, attitude about life.  But, after a recent conversation with a friend, I’ve noticed that I seem to pick and choose what’s going to go my way, and what’s not.   For example, I have a very strong belief that technology hates me.  No matter what I do, something with my computer/cell phone/stereo/bionic arm, always goes wrong.  I feel that I suck at technology and always will, so why bother.  It’s easier to just whine (or wine), complain and feel sorry for myself when I can’t figure out how to transfer a song from my computer to my cellphone, when in all actuality there are 18 APPLE stores in a 15 minute radius that have free classes 24 hours a day, not to mention 18 million free resources on the internet dedicated to this specific problem.

Diving in deeper, I’ve noticed major victim issues exist between me and the following two themes…

I’m too busy.

I don’t have enough money.

These two victimizing statements go hand in hand.  If you’ve ever tried to make plans with me, or work on a project with me this is an all too common occurrence…   “I don’t have enough time to (work out, have fun, write my blog, schedule a business meeting, clean the apartment, discover the cure for athlete’s foot) because I’m too busy.  I’m too busy because I have to work all the time because I don’t have enough money.

The funny thing about this statement is that it doesn’t have to be true, and in fact isn’t true at all.  Working 90 hours doesn’t make people more money.  I know tons of people that work a million hours a week and are still always broke, and in turn, are completely exhausted and miserable.  If anything, all of that time spent working on things you’re not passionate about takes away valuable time and energy from things your ARE passionate about.  Find your passion and the money will follow.

So, no more playing the victim.  No more, “I can’t-s…”  Time to figure this sh*t out so January 2015 isn’t spent in a mental ward scrubbing the tattoo of the word LOSER off of my forehead.

See you in February.