Why I Hate New Year

It's time for another blog post to acknowledge my least favourite of all holidays - New Year.

So, birthdays are a bit of a let down. I think the only reason I enjoy birthdays is because I share them with my twin brother. If it wasn't for him, I would probably feel like my birthday is an artificial celebration. Yes, it's the anniversary of my birth, yes I'm a year older, but what difference does it make? Nonetheless, I get to celebrate my twin's birthday and I get presents, so the whole day isn't a complete waste of time.

The same can't be said for New Year. Other than the new millennium, which was actually pretty impressive, New Year is a pointless, false celebration of nothing in particular. Nothing happens, time just passes. The number of the year changes. This isn't special; the day changes every day. The time changes every second. It's not a big deal. It's at this time of year that I regret being too old to spend New Year asleep in bed and too young to spend New Year looking after a newborn baby or sitting in a retirement home. I yearn for the day when someone will look to me for New Year plans and I'll say 'Sorry Mildred*, I'm spending the day with my grandchildren.'

I hate how everyone feels an immense social pressure to be out and drinking. There is nothing shameful about a night in, alone, on literally any other night. It's only on New Year that it actually matters. This makes any night out inevitably shit, because the entire world is out trying to have a good time. What makes nights out enjoyable for the rest of the year is that everywhere isn't horribly crowded. New Year is the worst time to try and go out. I actively stay in, but even so there's always a huge amount of social juggling trying to make sure everyone is doing something.

It's not a question of not having plans, it's a question of everyone having to have plans, to the point where plans are impossible, After the happy, familiar routine of Christmas we have to suffer this chaotic mess. There either needs to be an enforced religious celebration in which every New Year is spent with family, or everyone needs to treat New Year like a regular evening. Why the hell are we even celebrating the onset of January? January is the second worst month, after February. Lets put an end to this repulsive madness.

I hope everyone has a reasonably pleasant Wednesday night. But if you don't, don't worry. It's just one night out of 365.

*I imagine that when I am old everyone I know will be called Mildred.

Sad Dog Films

I have never had a dog, or any pet in fact. I like dogs. I will happily see a dog and think 'oh, that is a cute dog.' If somebody has a dog I am mildly interested, but not as interested as I would be if they had a miniature, talking dragon. I have friends (and my mum) who will go crazy whenever they see a dog. They will immediately feel a strong emotional connection to the dog and want to pet it. When I watch adverts with my mum if there is a dog she will say 'Aww what a lovely little dog,' but when I once pointed out an adorable baby in an advert she said 'Nah, I don't really like babies.' Great, thanks Mum.

So at Christmas I saw Marley and Me, which is supposedly a really sad film. I saw it with a grown man (and former dog owner) who cried. I also watched it in the company of the most pitiful dog I had ever met, who was blind in both eyes, had strange growths behind his ears, and whined whenever he wasn't lying down. The main thing I got out of Marley and Me was that being a newspaper columnist looks like a fun job, and that Eric Dane played the exact same character he did in Grey's Anatomy. Given the hype about how sad the film was, I was expecting Marley to die saving one of the children from drowning. When (spoilers!) the dog died- and I don't mean to sound callous- it was kind of an anticlimax. Marley was old, he had a good life. Dogs aren't immortal.

Recently I watched My Dog Skip, which was more interesting because it was a coming-of-age story set in the American South with 15-year-old Frankie Muniz managing to play a convincing 9-year-old. I did cry a bit at the end of that one, mostly because (spoilers!) I thought Skip was going to die when the evil alcohol smugglers, or whoever they were, hit him with a spade, but then he actually died of old age when Frankie Muniz was off at university. Also, to be honest, Skip was a nicer dog than Marley.

I cried when Simba's dad died though. And Nemo's mum. Not Bambi's mum, though. I once painted a picture when I was three which is either 'Father Christmas Walking Through The Woods' or 'The Death Of Bambi's Mother'. I'm not sure if the big red splodge is Father Christmas or the blood of a fallen doe. I'm probably a terrible person.

Secret Badassery

One morning recently I was going to wear a white t-shirt to do work experience in an office, but I decided that I am, in fact, an anarchist, so I wore a black t-shirt instead. My subtle rebellion against the establisment was ignored. I was not stopped at reception by a bouncer saying 'You can't come in here young lady, that black t-shirt is far too hardcore for the office environment.' Once again, my secret badassery is so stealthy that nobody has caught on to it yet.

Sometimes, if I am feeling particularly tired or grumpy, I consider putting on eyeliner, as if that would be a noticable statement against authority and would frighten people on the train. 'Imagine,' I sometimes think, 'If I wore nail varnish, that'll show everyone that I am wild and out of control.' I seem to have made up completely non-existent uniform regulations so that I can mentally rebel against the adult world without actually rebelling. If I listen to angry teenage-girl music while wearing boots I somehow assume that this is it, this is the revolution. I am the Mockingjay. 

In truth, I respect authority. I used to cry when I got told off in school, apart from when I was sent out of maths for laughing because that was ridiculous*. I obediently follow instructions. Sometimes I automatically refuse cups of tea because I feel like I don't want to waste time and resources, then I have to awkwardly backtrack and say that I actually would like a cup of tea, please, thank you, if it's not too much trouble. All my memories that involve actual bad behaviour are followed by even stronger memories of tearfully apologising. The toughest, most rebellious thing I have ever done was put glitter gel in my mum's facecream, when I was eight. I tried to say it wasn't me, I tried to blame it on my dad, or on my brother, who can't walk, and who in the unlikely event of gaining the use of his legs probably wouldn't think 'At last, I can make her go to work with glitter on her face, that'll show her.' Then I admitted it was me, cried, and was sent to my room. 

Basically: beware me. I may never have had a detention, I may have had a nightmare last night about being late for a lesson because I left my bag in another classroom, but I am a RECKLESS, UNTAMEABLE BADASS.** 

*I was forbidden from smiling for the rest of the lesson, as if it's illegal to actually enjoy maths. 

**Perhaps not. 

The Return of the Anne

After a two year hiatus, I have decided to re-start my old teenage blog.

This is for several reasons. Firstly, I can't remember why I stopped blogging. Perhaps the sad news story that I read on the 15th March 2012 was so harrowing that I suffered some kind of brain lapse, and subsequently repressed the memory that I ever had a blog. Perhaps I was overcome with university work. Perhaps I took a deliberate leave of absence from blogging to focus on my personal life. Maybe I just decided to tweet everything instead. I will never know.

Secondly, my parents found this blog one night in 2013. From the sound of it, they sat up for most of the night reading it. My dad then printed off my Christmas-related blog posts and stuck them on the labels of my Christmas presents. While I found their enthusiastic response encouraging, I was pretty embarrassed. They didn't create me and raise me to adulthood so they could Google me. Nonetheless, my dad seemed disappointed that I no longer had a blog, so maybe I'm restarting this as a desperate cry for further approval. Hi Dad? Dad? Are you reading this? Dad?

Thirdly, I think of things to blog about all the time. I enjoyed blogging. I miss blogging. When I tried to blog about my time in Indiana it eventually failed, because I was tweeting everything I blogged, I was extremely busy watching every season of Grey's Anatomy, and I got acclimatised into America so that it stopped being as much of a novelty. People stopped mispronouncing my name. They asked me the same questions ("Do you watch Sherlock?" "So do you, like, drink a lot of tea?") over and over again. Now I have new things to blog about. A lot has happened since March 2012. I am a real grown-up, even though I'm currently reading the most recent Percy Jackson book and I still can't drive.

So, to the hopefully at least one person who is actually reading this (Dad, turn off the computer and go to bed), expect more blog entries in the future.