That’s the kind of giddy glee I’ve been experiencing ever since I dropped five hundo on the legendary Bloggers in Sin City (un)Conference.

And convinced my brother to come with me.

So I’ve always wanted to attend Bloggers in Sin City. I’ve always wanted to go to Vegas, too, but neither has ever worked out.

I started this blog in early 2009, right around the time the first BiSC was announced. At that point in my life, I’d never have considered actually going. I mean, everyone going had these super popular blogs with tons of commenters and real followers and from where I stood, it seemed like they all knew each other already.

Also I was just kinda wimpy back then.

But then I kept writing. And BiSC kept happening. And then it became 2012 and I was like, wait, I need to GO. What have I been waiting for?

So I signed up. I signed up even though I didn’t know when I’d have an income. I signed up even though I have met just one person going – and he’s my little brother. (Which is awesome). I signed up even though I still think that everyone else has more popular blogs than I do.

Which brings me to my next point. It doesn’t matter! I remember in high school when I was floating around on the outskirts of the “popular” crowd. I remember feeling intimidated and excluded and just generally not cool enough to join in.

And then I think about how that was 10 years ago and I get really proud of where I am now. Of course I anticipate being a little nervous rolling into Vegas to party with 58 people I’ve never met. But there’s not one trace of doubt that I’ll fit right in. There’s no part of me that wants to hang out on the outskirts and watch – and I’m beyond thrilled to be ready to dive right in.

Something even more exciting? BiSC has partnered up with Paper’d App to cover the full cost of registration for one lucky attendee! If I win, I’m going to split the cost with my brother (#SibsInSinCity!) and also look into getting an iPhone … so, you know, maybe I could actually use the super cool app that paid for my trip!

For a lot of people around me, 2011 was an awful year. In my immediate group of friends, 2011 saw a restraining order, disappointing relationships, one shocking death after another, job losses, and huge changes in family dynamics.

Given everything that’s happened in the last 12 months, it’s easy to hoist 2012 up onto that Pedestal of Awesome Years. But if I learned anything in 2011, I learned that I have to make my own Awesome Year. So I’m following in the footsteps of Nicole and what I’m sure are countless other bloggers and living this year on purpose. With specific goals. With actionable goals.

***

…I want to find another creative outlet, outside of writing. I want to create tangible beauty, which sounds so cliché but is so true. I used to love art classes and working tirelessly at a drawing or a mound of clay or strands of wire and then stepping back to see something so unique seem to appear out of nowhere. Out of my own hands.

…I want to be a more active blogger. I love this blog and I love sharing stories with you – I want there to be more of you. I want to connect with you more and that has to start with me. So I’m going to make a better effort to comment, to communicate, to tweet, to email. Whatever it takes.

…I also want to write more. I’ve been writing since I could hold a pencil – I even founded my own publishing company when I was in grade school and published family news letters and short stories to be sent to my subscribers. I even won some writing contests, one of which got me a free week-long trip to London! I’m going to enter more contests, submit more essays, write more.

…I want to have better sleeping habits. I want to visit my family more often. I want to do nice things for the friends I care about and visit the ones who are far away. I want to explore New York City and cure the restlessness that’s been wriggling within me for months.

…I want to get healthier. This means cooking more, eating less, working out more. I do want to lose 20 pounds, but I’m determined to do it right, which is something I’ve struggled with for as long as I can remember. I want to run faster and feel better and be happy and proud when I look in the mirror. Naked.

…I want to be in complete control of my finances. I want to pay down at least 75% of my credit card debt and still enjoy life. That will take some work, I know.

My word this year is COMMIT because it terrifies me. I’m committing to these goals, to staying in New York City, to a career, to my friends, and to myself. Most of all, I’m committing to myself.

2012? Bring. It. On.

I sent the obligatory Crappy Life Update Email to my ginormous immediate family since they are all (very loving) gossip mongers and hounds and if I didn’t tell everyone the (simple) story myself, it would snowball out of control until what really happened is that I was actually lit on fire.

(Yes, I actually got laid off, which is different from getting fired, but I didn’t want to make a joke about my family thinking I got laid. Or something.)

Moving on. So my grandma calls me shortly after this email goes out. She’s so frantic you might assume she was actually on fire, but no, she’s just very concerned and loves me very much and wants to know how I’m doing.

Unfortunately, it’s in this same conversation that I have to admit to having a boy roommate. It sounds like her already palpitating heart comes to a complete halt until she very nicely composes herself and accepts my explanation that it is 2012 and girls can live with boys and not date them and not be awkward and also not be destined to burn in hell. (Again, with the fire. That was unintentional.)

After her shock wears off and she’s sure I’m definitely not on fire or going to be on fire or suffering some deep emotional duress from being laid off (hold the sex jokes here, it’s my grandma), she has some other news.

Her friends from church have a daughter who just moved to New York. Will I please call her?

Seriously – that’s what she says to me. “My friends from church have a daughter who just moved to New York City. Can you call her?”

I said, Grandma, that’s awkward. But if you get me her e-mail address I’m happy to reach out to her that way!

Did I mention my grandma lives in Idaho? Can you imagine that phone call?

“Hi, Sara. [Oh, yeah, we have the same name, too.] This is Sara. My grandma knows your parents at church in Idaho. Want to hang out in NYC?”

Right? Awkward.

But then I get a letter in the mail with some stationery with Sara’s information printed on it. All of Sara’s information. Her e-mail address, her phone number, and her physical address. Like I might mail her something. Grandmas!

So I got this letter the other day and I sent Sara an email seeing if she wanted to hang out. Of course she did, since I’m nice and we have the same name and we are both from Idaho and now we’re in New York. Also, since she’s new and wants to make friends.

I met Sara today at Cafe Lalo, which is that super cute cafe featured in that horribly dated movie You’ve Got Mail, which is of course all about being introduced by that awkward old guy telling you that … you’ve got mail.

Appropriate setting, I think, for a blind friend-date set up by my grandma. In Idaho.

Oh, and there’s still no one on fire. Or getting laid.

Let me back up. The plan this year was to ring in 2012 at the Washington Hilton in D.C. with about 40 of my best and closest friends, all of whom I’ve met at least once. The party has a “creative black-tie” dress code, so obviously a new dress was in order.

I found my classy little number at Forever 21 for the steep price of $14.50. It was short, tight, purple satin and damn sexy. If that’s not creative black-tie, then I don’t know what is.

On a typical creative black-tie night – that is, any night out involving sparkles, juniors clothing, and too much booze – my routine is fairly predictable: I’ll straighten my hair, throw on some eyeliner, redden my lips, and accessorize. I also always, always have back-up outfits.

But I really wanted to mix it up for this party. I felt so hot in my dress, I wanted everything else to reflect that. Playing around with makeup isn’t really easy for me – I have smallish, very dark eyes and naturally red lips, so anything over the top kinda goes the hooker route. And not in a creative black-tie way.

So I decided to try to use a curling iron. And I also didn’t take one single back-up dress.

Well, to start, the curling iron was a fail. There was an epic battle between the curls I wanted to create with the curling iron and my natural ringlets rebelling. The natural ringlets won, so I had to resort to my default straightened hair.

I bet you know what else was a fail…

Ladies: You know when there’s that awkward side-zip on a dress that also has a waist seam? And how that zipper always catches right at the seam, no matter how loose or tight the dress is? Well my super classy creative black-tie purple satin dress had that awkward side-zip and also a waist seam.

And the zipper caught.

And then the zipper broke off.

So there I was, standing in my brother’s room on New Year’s Eve an hour before the party starts with boring straight hair and absolutely nothing to wear. It’s not even like I could have gone progressive creative black-tie and worn my brother’s clothes. He’s 10 inches taller than I am.

I burst into tears of despair and panic and hopelessness as I called every single one of my girlfriends attending the party to see if there were any extra dresses.

There were not.

But that’s when having a vet friend became the best thing in the world.

“If we can find a needle and thread,” she said, “I could … well, I could sew the dress onto you.”

My tears stopped. I stared at her. My brother was already downstairs asking his female roommate (who also did not have an extra dress) if she owned a sewing kit.

Vet Friend spent the next half hour on her knees literally suturing me into my dress.

It stayed on all night and no one could even tell I had pink, brown, white, and blue thread sutured all up and down my side. (Except for when I told them. And I did tell everyone.)

The best part? I didn’t take anyone home with me, but I still got to rip off my dress at the end of the night.

Sutured into my dress and I still managed to steal the decorative balloon pillars.

Then my best friend got a job offer before I did.

My reaction – an unfamiliar one of envy and self-doubt – really threw me for another loop. I’d never not been happy for her many amazing accomplishments! It was time for some serious life-evaluation.

I wondered why her success meant my failure. Why anything positive for her didn’t immediately lend itself to positive support from me. Why I was suddenly unable to share in her excitement and instead wallowed in my own self-pity.

It wasn’t a pretty sight. I didn’t like that part of me that I didn’t even knew existed.

I really thought I was one of those secure, confident people with happiness oozing from within! I thought I was making me happy, rather than my circumstances. That impression fell apart when the curveballs kept pelting me.

What really struck me was that it wasn’t the job that was making me happy. It was being on what I viewed as equal footing with my closest friends.

Um, WHAT?! I’m sorry, did I not just write an entire post on how I hate competition between friends? Since when was Life in General a competition, then? Since when was my self-validation based on being “equal” to my friends?

See, with my realization that I need to uphold my Rabbit Hole Standards also came a Lightbulb Moment of Self Clarity. I deserve friends who respect me – but more than that, I deserve my own respect.

Maybe that sounds really obvious and maybe you’re all like, “Well, duh.” But I’m gonna bet you’re more like, “Shit, that’s true but that’s hard!”

And you know what? It really is. Just because I’ve realized that this is something I need to seriously work on doesn’t mean I’m suddenly all happy-from-within and don’t care about the fact that not everything is going my way quite yet.

It does mean, though, that when my best friend recently accepted a new job (her second offer, actually), I was genuinely thrilled to share in her excitement. I’m different from her – I’m different from everyone else – so things happen differently for me.

Also? I don’t think it’s about simply trusting that things will work out. They will, but that’s because I’m working really hard on figuring out what those things are and how I can make them work out for me.

Yay, self-empowerment!

“You girls are being mean,” Mrs. D told us. “You’re being exclusive and clicque-y and it needs to stop. You need to be nicer.”

See, my little group was that “popular” crowd of pre-teens that hung around with some high school boys (read: older siblings) and snuck out during lunch period to smoke cigarettes (newsflash: smoking’s not cool). I didn’t have any older siblings and I didn’t try a cigarette till most of the way through college, but I’d been friends with these girls for years. So I was part of them. So while my naive little self honestly thought I could be – and was – friends with everyone, that lecture during recess illustrated just how wrong I was.

Don’t get me wrong here – I wasn’t wrong about the “popular” kids being able to be friends with “everyone else”. That’s totally possible and after our budding egos were appropriately cut down, the dynamic changed noticeably.

Where I was wrong – and where I continue to stumble to this day – is the notion that I can be friends with everyone.

When I meet someone new – and we’re gonna stick to girlfriends here, since it’s most relevant to me currently – it’s pretty easy for me to jump down the Friendship Rabbit Hole.

I mean, it’s usually a lot of fun! New Friend gets to be introduced to all your other Rabbit Hole Friends. New Friend comes to girls’ nights and brunches and gym classes and sometimes even vacations.

You know what I’m talking about, right? I mean, the same thing happens when you get a new boyfriend, only then it’s called the Honeymoon Phase.

And what happens after the Honeymoon Phase? The same thing that happens once you hit the bottom of the Rabbit Hole: you’re granted a clear look at the type of person you’ve invited down there with you.

Overall, I’ve been lucky with my Friendship Rabbit Hole. Or maybe I’ve been foolish. Once I bring you down there, it’s hard for me to accept that you might not belong there after all. Hopefully you’re just as great as I initially thought and I’m thrilled to keep you! Sometimes, though, your true colors are revealed and instead of Friendship Rainbows all you have are Friendship Graveyards.

So then I have a choice. I can allow to you dwell down there with me and disappoint me over and over again. I can allow you to disrespect me and to break my trust. I can choose to make excuses for you.

Or I can kick you the fuck out of my Rabbit Hole.

It’s really disappointing when someone doesn’t meet my Rabbit Hole Standards. That’s never the desired outcome and when it happens with more frequency (as it has recently), it makes me doubt my own judgment.

So here it is, one of my 2012 Life Goals: Upholding the Standards of My Friendship Rabbit Hole. No more excusing the girl who forgets to offer support because she’s “spacey.” No more overlooking the discomfort that comes with the girl who makes every guy into a competition. No more accepting the fair-weather friends who suddenly become too busy to be there when it’s most needed. No more 5th, 6th, 7th chances to “make it up to me.”

Be a good friend, or get the hell out of my Rabbit Hole.

After learning of these drastic differences in our work cultures, he asked me:

“But if you can quit whenever you want, can’t you also get fired anytime they want?”

That’s the thing about at-will employment. Unless you’re part of a union, in America, you have the right to leave your employer at-will. The part that most of us take for granted is that it goes both ways.

When my colleague exhibited some serious anxiety at the mere thought of not having legally required job security, I scoffed.

“My company is stable and I’ve been there forever. They wouldn’t just fire me out of the blue.”

Well guess what happened? They did.

 ***

I try really hard to appreciate the little things in life. When I’m feeling stifled by New York City, I deliberately take note of beautiful architecture on the corner; I engage the Dunkin Donuts lady who pours my coffee; I smile at strangers.

Apparently, though, I’ve been falling short at appreciating the big things in life. Having a nice place to live, all of my immediate family members being alive and well, being employed.

Suddenly, I don’t have a paycheck on the horizon. My checking account is what it is; it won’t get replenished at the end of this month.

Suddenly, I don’t have any kind of structure to my day. I can do whatever I want whenever I want to, which maybe sounds appealing to lots of people, but I don’t function well this way. Even self-employed, workers-from-home have deadlines to meet and goals to accomplish. My freedom is endless and it’s suffocating me.

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I’m one of the most adaptable people they know. What they might not realize, however, is that I need prep time. I can take on Life Changes with a vengeance as long as I can convince myself it’s on my own terms.

This? This is not on my own terms.

And I guess that’s the lesson I have to learn here, right? I don’t get prep time for every Life Change. I have to learn to dodge the curve balls, or catch them, or at least not let them smash me in the face.

It’s proving to be a real challenge to prevent this curve ball from smashing me in the face.

I’ve just password-protected some of my older posts.

I thought about simply starting a new blog but I’m just not ready to do that. Instead, I just needed to remove the publicity of some past sexy times.

Maybe it’ll be temporary. Who knows. But I’m trying something new here so bear with me. (Full Disclosure: I totally just had to ask my brother whether it was “bear” or “bare” … JUDGE AWAY but at least I’m being honest. Also he didn’t even know so I had to ask a second person. Also I used “bear” first.)

But! Back to the issue at hand. Some posts have passwords now. They all have the same password. So, if for some reason you feel the need to read back over old posts of mine and find that some are hidden from you – just drop me a quick email and I’ll send the password right over!

It all started when I had my birthday party a few weeks ago. A close friend of mine sent in her affirmative RSVP … and included her boyfriend. I’d met this particular boyfriend just twice, though they’d recently moved in together. In what I think is an understandable reaction, I was pretty put off by this presumption. He hadn’t been invited, nor did he actually know any of the other guests attending – including me!

He ended up being out of town and, anyway, my birthday party was an absolute blast. I’m sure I’d have had just as much fun had he attended.

But then it happened again. And again. And lately, every organized event has culminated in some girlfriend being unable or unwilling to leave her boyfriend at home!

Here’s the thing – he wasn’t invited. Not only was he not invited, but he also doesn’t know any of the other people going. On top of those things, these are Reservation Required events – random people can’t just tag along, even if the random people are serious boyfriends.

But you know what the real problem here is? It’s not that these girls have become units with their boyfriends – something that inherently drives me nuts. It’s the presumptuousness of it all!

Living arrangements and relationship status makes no difference, really, though the pattern as of late has been the girl with the newly-moved-in-boyfriend.

If you lived with your parents and you were invited to a birthday party, would you bring them along without asking? Do you automatically invite your roommates everywhere you’re asked, even if they have never met the other parties?

Even when you have a friend new to town and you want to introduce her to all your amazing, wonderful, engaging friends – don’t you first ask if it’s ok that you bring her?

The thing that upsets me – no, it actually enrages me! – is the presumption attached to the “Oh, I’m bringing so-and-so.”

So, friends, please – when you get an invitation and it doesn’t have some version of “the more the merrier,” go ahead and ask whether it’s ok if you bring someone else.

I think it’s about time I address you as a whole. There are a lot of you in the world and while many of you are awesome, there’s a reason the “evil stepmom” stereotype exists. And it’s not just because of Cinderella.

I won’t pretend to be an expert, but I do have two stepmoms in my life, which is more than a lot of people I know. See, I have a stepmom of my own and my actual mom is a stepmom to my three stepsisters. They’re on opposite ends of the evil-good spectrum, but neither is perfect.

So, having spent the last several months semi-coaching my mom on how to be a Really Great Stepmom and also having just spent the last five days avoiding my own Terrible Mean Stepmom, I think it’s time I outline some very basic points for you all.

Keep in mind that I’ve been a stepkid for almost 10 years now; I know what I’m talking about.

It’s called a “blended family” for a reason.

If you’re planning to marry someone who already has kids, accept the reality of the situation before you walk down the aisle. What I mean to say is that the kids are always going to be part of the package deal and if you’re not ok with that, you shouldn’t be getting married to this person.

Nothing you do can ever remove them from the equation and you may as well accept this as soon as you can. The sooner you’re able to do this, the sooner everyone else in the family can relax.

You are and always will be The Adult.

If you’re old enough to be getting married – especially to someone with kids – guess what? You’re an adult! Even if you’re inheriting adult kids, you’re still an adult. Even if the adult kids struggle with welcoming you into their lives, you’re still an adult.

You know what this means? You have to act like an adult. You may not have parental authority of any kind, but that doesn’t mean you can’t demand the same respect you would demand from anyone else. It also doesn’t mean you can be disappointed when unarticulated expectations remain unmet.

Just because your new stepkid is pushing your buttons and testing your limits doesn’t mean you should become a doormat just to appease them, nor does it mean you should lash out in anger or resentment.

Demand respect. Require it – but also give it where it is deserved. Stand up for yourself – but stand up for your stepkid, too. Articulate your expectations.

Be understanding, patient, and kind. Be an adult.

“In with the new and out with the old” – It doesn’t work here.

There are two scenarios in which a stepmom is introduced: divorce and death. Both are incredibly painful for the kids. Both are abandonments of different sorts. Both draw a deep line in kids’ lives separating the Before and the After.

Respect that line, but never ignore what came before. If you’re part of the After, you’re either blurring that line or you’re making it deeper. Whichever you’re doing (and neither is more or less okay than the other), you need to recognize your role.

Lots of stepmoms would prefer that the Before didn’t exist; some of them wish it so hard that they begin to resent it. Some stepmoms want to dwell on the Before. They walk on eggshells, terrified they will overstep their invisible boundaries. Both of these stepmoms will fail if they don’t strike a balance between the Before and the After.

To stepmoms everywhere: We know it’s hard for you. It might be harder for you than it is for us, even, but I’m pretty sure that’s part of being an adult, right? You have to take responsibility for your choices – and stepkids are always a choice. You make the choice to have stepkids the second you choose to say “I do” to someone with kids.

All we ask, we stepkids of the world, is that you work with us. Being a step-anything is never easy for anyone. We get that – we need you to get it, too.