Is this thing on?

I'd be willing to bet that the phrase, "Is this thing on?" has to be one of the most often used opening lines in the introduction of a fresh new blog. I haven't googled it to find out, but I wouldn't be surprised. Maybe I should google it, but I probably won't... or maybe one day I will, but not right now. Right now, my primary goal is to do what's implied in my quite possibly, very likely cliche title above, by typing this out and then madly clicking and pointing to see if my new blog works ok.

Onwards and upwards. I'm the new girl, and I'll tell you why - and it's fairly simple: I'm new to Blogger (though not totally new to blogging of sorts) and this is a new year. Last year was very probably the single worst year of my life. And before you roll your eyes and ask "Well did anyone die? Was it that bad?" I'll save you the trouble and reply, yes and yes. So yeah, it was that bad, and now it's time to start anew. New year, new goals, new and improved me - or at least a work-in-progress me. So there it is, can I get an amen?

I chose my alias and the title of my blog page based primarily on those two factors, and I think those are fairly good reasons, though I'd be amis if I didn't tell you that referring to myself as girl could be construed as a bit misleading - I'm not a girl, I'm more of a woman, really; way out of my girlhood, to be sure. But calling myself the new woman wouldn't have had the same implications as the phrase, the new girl, which carries with it universally familiar thematic rings like starting fresh in a new place, or entering into a strange and unfamiliar environment full of new people, all while being unsure of your own potential for success. Plus the new woman sounds either like the chick some middle aged dude just left his loyal wife of thirty three years for, or some sort of special triple issue of a corny womens' magazine. So I went for The New Girl.

My mother won't like it. She'll say that my alias represents the swinging of the socio-political pendulum again; a return to the bad old days when men were referred to as Men, and women were referred to as girls. It's not that I'm not aware of the significance of such nuances - once you get to know me, it will be pretty obvious that social nuances like that mean quite a bit to me in general - it's just that in this case, I'm not going to read into it all that deeply. I just don't feel like it today. I'm tired and I'm hungover. I needed an alias, and this one seemed to work just fine. So here I am; the new girl. Welcome to my blog, and thank you for reading, you gorgeous creatures.