I have a little less than a week left of vacation before my spring semester starts and I’m quite enjoying all this free time on my hands. I’ve gotten very accustomed to sleeping in and moving at a nice, leisurely pace – all of which I am savoring because I will not be able to enjoy these luxuries when I return to Beijing!

I’ve been reading a ton, most of which I can attribute to my Kindle and free time. I’ve also debated taking up writing again, although I don’t have any of my working drafts (“working” is used loosely here; I haven’t written anything creatively since the summer of 2009) on hand. One of my friends gave me an idea about a book I could write, though. (Rather, he looked at me point-blank and said, “You should write a book and this is what it will be about. Then, when it’s complete, I get the first copy to read.” While I was taken aback by this as we hadn’t been talking about books or writing, such directness was refreshing.) I’ve been toying with starting that up with some kind of short story or prologue that I could use in the future to expand upon, but I’m hesitant to start writing anything because I won’t have time to even think about writing once the semester starts. Reading and writing tie in quite nicely with the resolutions I’ve made for 2011, though, so I’m pleased with that.

Speaking of resolutions, I’ve added on two more. One is to keep an account of my finances, because it’s about time I keep track of my cash flow (particularly as in China, everything is handled in cash, not plastic). It doesn’t matter how cheap things are in China or Hong Kong; I still need to know what I’m spending my money on! Like the pair of knockoff Uggs I got for $99HKD yesterday. Not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things (particularly when you compare that price to a pair of real Uggs), but it’s still money nonetheless.

The other is to maintain a daily happiness journal, inspired by Krissy. I’ve set up a Tumblr for this project, which can be found here: 每天开心 (Mei Tian Kai Xin). The name translates to “every day happy,” which I think is very fitting. Everyone needs a little bit of happiness each day.

My new Tumblr project hasn’t been the only thing I’ve been busy with online. I’ve been trying to figure out why my WP to Twitter plugin doesn’t work as it should. Every time I publish a post, it only tweets the title of my entry, not the title and URL. Anyone have a plugin to recommend that actually works? Or one that won’t start working and then randomly stop including the URL in tweets, as this plugin did?

Oh, and in celebration of this blog’s 2nd birthday, I’ve put up a new layout.

Tags: blog, money, tumblr, writing