On Saturday, Dec. 31, 1932, Virginia Woolf wrote a relatively long entry in her diary. I include a portion of that entry here:

This is in fact the last day of 1932, but I am so tired of polishing off Flush–such a pressure on the brain is caused by doing ten pages daily — that I am taking a morning off, & shall use it here, in my lazy way, to sum up the whole of life. By that phrase, one of my colloquialities, I only mean, I wish I could deliver myself of a picture of all my friends, thoughts, doings, projects at this moment . . .

For example, with Julian & Lettice Ramsay last night — why not simply become fluid in their lives, if my own is dim? And to use ones hands & eyes; to talk to people; to be a straw on the river, now & then — passive, not striving to say this is this. If one does not lie back & sum up & say to the moment, this very moment, stay you are so fair, what will be one’s gain, dying? No: stay, this moment. No one ever says that enough. — Diary 4, pp. 134-5.

Read on for Woolf’s New Year’s resolutions for 1931 and 1936.