I’m not an old dog by anyone’s account, unless twenty-eight has moved into the realm of the ancient and arthritic. My twenty-five-year-old brother might argue that point. He picked up the phone when I called home last Thursday, my birthday, and noted that I’d somehow managed to get one foot in the grave.

It’s just the opposite, though.

I’ve never been a big fan of New Year’s Resolutions. In fact, I was never really a fan of New Year’s Eve and its demanding social celebrations. Until recently, on New Year’s Eve I most often found myself chewing my thumbnails off in a locked bathroom, party raging outside the door, or weeping drunkenly into some ex-boyfriend’s chest in the corner of a loud dance floor. A few years ago, it occurred to me that the life I was living was mine. There was no weird force compelling me to suffer through my days. No one was making me live through an unfulfilling relationship, no one was shackling me to a desk at a job I hated, there was no overlord demanding that I dedicate my time to unresponsive and unsupportive friends.

I’m not sure I’ll ever get over my general ill-will toward the fuzzy sentimentality and do-good brainwashing that laps warmly over the general public between Thanksgiving and January 2. But since my birthday falls at the beginning of ‘New Leaf’ season, I can participate in my own version of hopeful planning for a year ahead.

So I have been making some changes, and it’s hard to stop.

This year, I received a book called The Artist’s Way for Christmas. I’d read about it on the websites of several artists I admire, but mostly I remember thinking it responsible for producing the wonderful work and inspiring life of Loobylu. I wondered whether it could get me any closer to living the life I have planned out in my head, the one I’m inching toward with small changes, the one I’m dedicated to making happen. (Sneak peek: it’s a life in Portland or San Francisco, complete with bike riding, crafting, writing, coffee, a bedroom door, a dog, and contentment.)

I cracked open The Artist’s Way about three weeks ago, and yesterday Loobylu posted about it on her site, calling it the ‘biggest turning point’ in her creative life. The book is hard’there’s lots about God in there, a concept that I unhesitatingly do not believe in. It is difficult to transfer what, for the author of the book, is a spiritual, divine moment (creativity is God speaking through you) into something that makes sense for me (creativity is un-self-consciousness, access to something normally ‘blocked’). It’s like a twelve-step program in its adherence to higher power, making peace, and letting go. Most importantly, though, it has me writing. Every day. Pages and pages. It has me poking around in my past for old detractors and enemies (Remember the second grade teacher who said you were lazy?) and supporters and cheerleaders (Remember the art school director who said you’d get into Yale with your portfolio, no problem?). It has me itching to skip ahead, like I’d want to do with a good novel, to get to the juicy parts. It has me tuning the guitar and playing along to Dan’s nonsensical, tuneful la-di-das.

This is different, and better, than what life was like three weeks ago. And it will only get better, I think.

But lest you think I have tipped overboard into a New-Agey world of hippie-dippie purple swirls, free love, chakra-alignment, and cosmic intervention, I assure you that all this is being done from my third floor East Village perch, where I’m clad nearly all-in-black and almost constantly scowling.

If I stay away from blogging responsibilities, you know where I am: hunched over a marble notebook, scrawling doodles and thoughts. I would love to hear from anyone who has worked through this book before.