Happy New Year (Belatedly)

Happy New Year, Law and Letters readers!

Thank you for reading. I am sorry for not writing more recently. But thanks for reading all the other days I write.

I write because I can't imagine not writing. I write because against all reason, there seems to be people who are interested in what I write, and who care about what happens to me.

I've been extremely fortunate to have been read by you, and even more happy to have met and befriended some of you. Some of you are rapidly becoming my very good friends, and this is the best thing of all about blogging.

2006 sucked like no other: I went from living at home with my weird, dysfunctional immigrant family to an awesome school, but Fall Semester 2006 had extreme suckage due to incredible trauma in my attempts to adjust to the international LL.M program. 2007 was a marked improvement when they all decided they did not want to be friends with me anyway, but had a hiccup of drama when I had to cut off, as one would a tumor, one last dramatic, leeching, soul-sucking friendship with the last French person. That done, things really improved, and for whatever work stress, things have been great. 2007 ended on a really awesome note, with me getting into my current program (it doesn't fit me well, but the competitiveness of S.J.D. programs makes me feel good about this even to this day), moving into a beautiful new apartment (which is too cold and from which I am trying to move, but it is charming and it is my own), making new friends at school and through the blog, and finding new happiness (to whom I am also eager to return).

I hope that 2008 is normal, undramatic, non-traumatic, and maybe even good. It looks like for once, it could be this way. I am cautiously optimistic.

In any case, visiting family has been really nice (if very busy with the children, whom I love), and I am glad to have caught up with a few friends, but I will be very happy to hop on that plane on Thursday and come home. That, to me, will be when the new year really arrives: when I come back from the other side, as promised.