I've never been much for the idea of New Year's resolutions. I figure they're just promises being made so they can be broken soon enough, so why not just skip the whole mess and just not make any in the first place? So that's what I do, I treat the New Year just like any other end of month passing. I make changes in the day to day of life.

But I think I've decided on a few things I want to work on this year and see if I can make them routine and habit. One is maintaining PtF. There's 3 sections that I have been trying (unsuccessfully!) to keep up-to-date -- the journal, the photoblog and the View from Here. TVfH has been the easiest to maintain, it requires very little from me. I just need to remember to take 3 pictures once a week and upload them. Easy.

The journal and the photoblog are more difficult. They require something from me on a personal level and I find at times it's hard to give that part of me out freely. We'll see. I'm aiming for a journal & photoblog entry once every weekday. I never get anything done on weekends when everyone else is home.

I was hopping around online through some journals this past weekend and found someone's very neat list of things they want to do this coming year. I was impressed and am debating making one of my own. I have a running month-to-month to do list that I write up while I'm waiting for Miss Sara at her swimming lessons but I like the idea of a yearly list. Maybe I can finally write down my need to buy a goddamned sewing machine.

Part of the reason I started The View from Here was so I could watch the changes I was planning actually happen. But of course they haven't happened. The fabulous material I have hiding in a Rubbermaid tote that's earmarked for fluffy soft lounge cushions for the couch hasn't seen the light of day in months. I haven't done anything more with my ideas for painting the walls and ceiling. Not to mention it looks like my personal art gallery is going to stay at three items forevermore.

I like to think that maybe I could make more happen if I was more organized, if I had just one more to-do list. And maybe it would. More likely I'd ignore the to-do list and get all caught up in the lousy details of life. I've bought a ton of models to work on and I haven't done anything with them in so long. I'll find the time. I know I will.

I realized after I wrote my last entry that I'm not sleeping. And exhaustion from a lack of solid healthy sleep can look a lot like depression. I keep on waking up between 4-6am with my back just aching... every single night. And it's the crappy kind of pain, the one that teases me into thinking if I just don't breathe, don't move, don't stay still, sit just so, it'll go away. I think I prefer sharp pain to this devious aching.

So this morning I got up, took a Vioxx and filled the hot water bottle and sat like a zombie in my computer chair staring at my monitor until the heat and the drugs made the aching go away. That took an hour. No wonder I'm so tired all the time. I've been working on my Physiotherapy exercises, using heat to soothe and avoiding straining it and I still hurt. I don't know what to do. I've been thinking about taking a Vioxx as a preventative measure just before I go to bed but that's just courting trouble.

I've always metabolized painkillers really really damn fast. Along with that I will build a resistance to them almost as fast. I learned this the hard way in my teens with the periods from hell. It got to the point I was swallowing 7-8 Extra Strength Tylenols at a time just to blunt the edge of the pain. As soon as I realized that just because they weren't killing the pain, it didn't mean they weren't killing my liver I stopped taking any painkillers. It took a few years but I can take a normal dosage now and treat a headache, but I know that I can't treat chronic pain with them.

So that's my debate right now. Do I take them on a regular basis so I can sleep, knowing that I will hit the point that they just won't work anymore? Or do I keep going like this, using them when I hurt to the point of immobility but at the expense of my ability to sleep? Fucked if I know. I guess I'll ask Liz tomorrow at Physio.

And with that, I'm at 30-minutes.