I need a new look. This diary isn’t me. I’m not really a pink person that much. And that little “let’s talk” mug has got to go. And I don’t have all my favorites listed. And I want some green, because it is my favorite color. No offense to WebChick who did a fabulous job designing this way back when, it’s a great design and I get compliments regularly, but I’ve just outgrown it. I want something simpler, more modern, and less girly. And I’m willing to pay. (So that’s an offer.)

I have changed a lot in the last year since I started keeping this. I’m not sure how it happened, or better yet, why. But I have changed.

As a kid I matured, physically, very fast. So I think people generally assumed that because I looked 18 when I was 14 that I must have *thought* like an 18-year old. Which was not the case – at all – but they still treated me like that. And then those years between 16-20 were a total clusterfuck. My life only barely began to have some normalcy and security around 21. So in the last six years I’ve had a chance to actually start to look at myself, who I am, because for so long I’d just been trying to survive that it really didn’t matter to me.

I think I’m becoming less materialistic (-don’t you snicker at me-.) But it is amazing how having anything and everything (1-16), then having nothing (16-20), and then having the ability to have what you want and desire again (21-present) will warp your perspective of just how important that Christian Dior lipstick really is. Not to mention Chanel. But someplace along the way I realized that plain ole’ Bonne Bell lasts longer and doesn’t make my lips peel.

Now I’m looking forward. For a long time I was too scared to look forward and just treading water. Maybe it is getting married. In 95 days – to be exact. That is making me pay attention to that big scary future. Maybe at some point I’ll stop feeling like the “Life Robbers” are just around the corner. And by Life Robbers, I mean the forces that cause you to loose your home, car, job, belongings, etc. Because it has happened before and I know history repeats. So I don’t know if I’ll ever feel secure.

But I have to work on it. My defeatist attitude of “why bother, it will just get taken away” has to change. And I’m feeling it. At some point we will buy a house and I will have cocktail parties with tiki torches. Because unlike at 16, I have some say in this now. And I have a partner to help me.

And, wow, I really just got off on a tangent. Suffice to say that I’m just ready for a new diary layout and I’m totally inept and stuff.