Local Author, MC Coolidge, Gives Up Quest For '365 Days Of Fun,' Will Join Convent Instead

Noted Sarasota diarist, journalist and all-around bon vivant, MC Coolidge, has abandoned her self-imposed year-long journey to have fun every day of 2010. What began with such promise in that seminal essay that she penned for the New Year's Day edition of the Herald-Tribune, where she vowed "I'm not going to let another 365 days go by existing solely in survival mode. In 2010, baby, I'm going to have me some fun.....I am going to write that novel, buy a sexy suit for swimming, rip the plastic off my shrink-wrapped life and open my heart to sheer fun."

Author M. C. Coolidge, prior to her descent into hell.

Tragically, those expectations of joy, of higher aspirations have come crashing ashore, dashed on the unforgiving shoals of real life. As do so many at the turn of the calendar year, Ms. Coolidge succumbed to the exuberance that is a new beginning, a new chapter; like a brand new Etch-A-Sketch that your little brother hasn't played with yet, still devoid of his indelible mark of greasy fingerprints. Now she sits alone in a darkened room somewhere, her dream of fun shattered into a million tiny shards that, even though she'll sweep them up as best her Hoover canister will allow, there will always be just a few pieces that will remain to lodge in the sole of her foot, as well as in the very soul of her spirit, a constant and painful reminder of her failure and disillusionment.

To her faithful cadre of readers, the train wreck to come became more evident with each installment of her plaintive missives:

• Jan. 2: "Which, brings me to yesterday …. supposedly my first day of a fun-filled year. Okay, um, not so much. Fun, that is."



• Jan. 4: **LANGUAGE WARNING** "Jiminy Cricket! Day four of my FANY (Fun Ambitions for New Year) resolution and I’m in loser-ville!"



• Jan. 6: "...writing like I did yesterday is actually fun. A perverse, brain-wracking, mentally exhausting, kind of fun...."



• Jan. 8: "Eek! Yesterday I fell off the fun wagon....I had read about a lecture I wanted to go to —a lecture about.....the Holocaust...but didn't go." (We see here that, even by day 8, her mind, ill-accustomed as it was to distinquish pleasureable experiences, ie, 'fun' from distasteful experiences, ie, 'real life,' is now beginning to equate experiences such as a lecture about one of history's most abhorrent episodes of depravity and human suffering with 'fun')



• Jan. 11: "....the place was so jam-packed you got to second base — with just about everybody — just by trying to make it to the bathroom and back." (Now we see that Coolidge's concept of 'fun' has degenerated further into tawdry snippets of perversion. Yet she seems, somehow, to realize the downward spiral in which she is ensnared.) "So, was it fun? It was a decent enough time … but still not the kind of fun I’m trying to have in 2010."



• Jan. 12: (By the very next day, however, her idea of 'fun' has devolved into outright pandering to her horrified, yet riveted, readers.) "If you’d like to help me have some fun....just vote for MC as “best blogger” in the (Sarasota M)agazine’s online poll."



• Jan. 16: "Geez. I’m more than a little disappointed in myself. I’m sorry to be such a drag."



• Jan. 18: "After a dismal last week through Friday, then, came Saturday.....a rainstorm."



• Feb. 4: "I don’t know. But I cried. And weirdly. Very weirdly … I was having fun at the same time." (Here, it is evident that Coolidge has lost all concept of her elusive 'fun,' as she now considers weeping to be "fun." Thankfully, the end of all this suffering is at hand.)



• Feb. 11: "It’s nearly 930 on a Thursday night and I just finished re-hanging the shower door...and I’m thinking … really … where the hell is my MC Mojo? If anybody finds it, will you send it back?" (Having lost all sense of 'fun,' Coolidge puts on a brave face for her readers while making what is an obvious cry for help.)



• Feb. 12: "Sheesh. Last night after I posted my “woe is me, I don’t got no fun” blog, I realized what a whiner I’ve turned into about this whole “365 days of fun” thing I got myself into for my New Year’s Resolution.....I’m not going to write again — about fun...."

Thus, on Feb. 12th, 2010, a scant 43 days into her pursuit of fun, it is over. Mercifully.

It was reported that Ms. Coolidge, emotionally spent and mentally exhausted, has entered a convent and will begin the process of becoming a cloistered nun when her physical and psychological health allows, much to the chagrin of her adoring male fans, which were legion.

When she completes her studies and recites her vows, she will take on the name of "Sister Mary-Katen Ashley" of the Little Sisters of the Condominium on the Beach, where she will join in their ministry to the dissolute and downtrodden former property owners of Siesta Key, who bought at the height of the real estate boom and are now living on the streets, albeit the tony, paved-with-gold streets, of Siesta Key.

The soon-to-be Sister Mary-Katen Ashley, on Siesta Key beach, hawking the famous "Fly-Or-Die" insect and unwanted beach lothario repellant device, for which the Little Sisters craft by hand and sell to tourists, as their main source of funding their unique mission. Observe the physical change in appearance wrought by her ill-fated quixotic quest for 'fun.'

May you find, if not the fun you so hoped to discover, the peace you so richly deserve, dear Little Sister......