1) I'm happy. I'm happier now than I've been in the two years since I left Chicago to rip everything up and start again as Alex Balk once tagged a post in Gawker, which I always kind of loved. Rip it up and start again. Punk rock.

2) It is a lot of work to work at The Post. It's true. Reporting. It takes time. As does writing. As does doing a column. As does having a relationship. As does doing comedy. As does complaining about not having enough time. As does whoring yourself out to do bigger and better projects. But enough about that. I love my work, all of that, and I feel excited about this being a definitive year. This is my first official "really attempting to return to blogging regularly rather than just posting a meaningful, cryptic, lingering, longing, magical, mystical, transcendental, ethereal YouTube video and letting that talk for me" post. I hope you like it.

3) I'm a perfectionist, my God am I a perfectionist. So neurotic. It's why I'm a great writer, and it's why I sometimes stop. Sometimes knowing that every word is rough, raw, not flowing perfectly will just hang out there and be there forever and ever (forever ever? forever ever) is enough to stop me from putting a daily blog post up. Sometimes it's because I haven't done laundry in 6 months. See point # 2. But the whole point of blogs, something I never was very good about abiding by, is the transience, the immediacy, the lack of perfection. It's the jolt of hello. It's the peeping Tom email quality that lets you reach inside someone's life to see what really makes it tick, to hear the late-night dorm conversation that propels the writer into daily existence in the first place. It is not perfect. It is a rough draft.

4) When my column started, I was so nervous. What was going to happen? Never in about 800 million years did I expect to fall into a relationship that had some kind of potential. Perhaps that confession seems negative, bleak, dark, and opposite of every kind of kernel of positivity and hope that I am constantly forcing down people's throats. But. It's true. I was in it to win it. I was going to date, date, date, date, keep my numbers up, I would text myself notes on the men I was going out with, I would scribble on napkins funny moments that had happened, I would email my editors wildly hilarious, wildly inappropriate recollections of "oh no he di'nt" scenes that transpired. It was not a reality. It was a story. I lived for the story.

5) Then something happened. I met someone. I do not report. God, I am so careful not to report. I mean, come on, let's be honest, of course, I report. I told him recently as some hilarious thing happened, "My life is one great quote." So arrogant am I. But yes, OK, I do report. I report in the gay little morning hours when I squirrel away to journal, to write free flowing, stream of conscious thoughts, sometimes smugly drinking my decaffeinated green tea all the while thinking, "You know, Michael Jordan never had any injuries and that's because he stretched, that's what made him a great athlete was the warm-up." And me, my smugness comes from knowing, "Ohhhh, Mandy, darling, you are such a fabulous writer because you too like that gloooorious athlete are warming up your divine literary muscles as you attempt to take long, lingering looks into your soul, delving into that mind of yours, good for you, word warrior! Good for you, I say!" So I take my journal entries, and I take my memory and they become the columns. And it is better. Here is why. I will tell you why.

6) It is better because I am living.

7) I am living now. It's kind of unheard of, but when I wake up, I don't feel that fake glee that I used to force myself out of bed in the morning, that chipper steely sense of determination to have a good day and make the most out of this New York hollow existence filled with 8,000 possibilities for success or screeching failure. Now I just. Am. It doesn't have a point. I hear the soundtrack that I create on my iPod, I feel it flowing into my ears and know that music is just one of the many tools that I have. I twirl sometimes. I dance in the elevator. I act like an idiot. I get excited about which piece of jewelry I'm going to wear, I place the symbolic talisman exactly where I want it by my bedside. I dream.

8) It's what I tell everyone when I give my disjointed, frantic, jumping, frenetic speeches. I say, "Dream." Oh so trite. But real. And the most important thing. When I first moved here, I would apologetically look down at the pavement perhaps if asked what I wanted to do, I would mumble something about comedy but "Oh not really." And then something happened, the fates they kept colliding, I would meet one person, I would do another show, I would get another opportunity. "Miss Mandy, are you going up?" my friend Hannibal Buress would ask me, and I would go out, me and this kid I didn't know to the clubs and I was terrified out of my mind, always feeling like an impostor but forcing myself each time to go a little bit farther, to dream, to believe, to dream, to do.

9) And now when people ask, what do you do, what do you want, I'm more confident than I've ever been. I know exactly what I want - love, happiness, joy, love, happiness, joy - and everything is happening because, well, see #8.

10) I so want to write snarky, bitchy, witty, HI-larious content for you, my friends, but I truly believe it's the truth, it's letting you know what's happening inside me that might be of any use at all. I will be too for school tomorrow, I promise. But in reintroducing myself to blogging - and doing it where like the rest of my life - it's actually living rather than a carefully crafted strategy, an ends to a means, this will be a good exercise. These will not be perfect. These will not be parables. These will not be monologues. These will not be jokes. These will be moments as best as I can deliver. I get exhausted by too cool for school. I can do it. But that's never what's sold me. Anyone who's ever read me has read me for me. So I'm going to give that a shot.