Yet Another Brand New Year

I trend towards the overly optimistic this time of year.  It’s another new beginning, right?  I love the springtime for that same reason but I’ve always considered the start of a new year as more of a rebirth scenario than even spring.  What I don’t think I ever understood was why I felt the need to have a rebirth scenario at all.  There is no reason to wish for a do-over if you do it right the first time.  But that is exactly what I thought every New Year celebration was supposed to be – an opportunity to correct that which I had screwed up in year prior.  I wrote about this idea extensively about a year ago in a similar blog.  Reading that post today, I couldn’t help but be struck by the obvious lack of support or justification for my ambitious optimism.  Not that blind faith in oneself or in of itself is a bad thing but blind faith of any variety has never been a concept that I could or at least would allow myself to embrace.  But I think that I had allowed the events preceding the writing of the aforementioned blog to force me into an existential corner – a fight or flight situation of an intellectual and emotional sort.  As a result, 2012 soon became for me ‘the year of me’. 

I had made a possibly unconscious decision at the end of my last relationship that I was going to do what I wanted to only – exactly anything and everything that I wanted to do.  Yes, it started as a selfish reaction to a negative experience but I soon realized that I had unwittingly resolved to just be me for maybe the first time in my life if I’m completely honest with myself.  I questioned everything, took nothing off the table.  About me, my choices in life, past loves, my career, whatever – all of it.  Everything that I thought the world thought I was and everything I thought I was supposed to be and everything else in between.  I had an intense desire to discover about myself that which had made my path less than straight. 

It was a good year.  My career accelerated at a pace that I never thought possible.  I finally got licensed.  I finally got officially promoted to the position I had embraced long before it was mine.  I’m more financially stable now than I’ve been maybe ever.  I finally went public with my art again and it’s been a success in every possible way.  My writing has improved.  I’m able to say things I never thought I had the voice to say.  I command respect from the room when I’m in a room full of more important, more successful douche bags.  I’m able to own my past and be at peace with it and more importantly to not second guess it.  To not second guess me, period.  To be open and honest and caring and genuinely concerned about not just the people in my life that I love but anyone that I meet.  I’ve learned to not only listen but to hear what other people are saying.  I’ve allowed myself to admit that I’m not perfect and that I should have never tried to be.  I’m okay now.  I’m me.  I’ve come full circle from where I started just to know that annoyingly uncomplicated fact. 

At this beginning of yet another brand new year, I’ve discovered what should be, must be the most obvious underpinning ruling construct of the human condition.  I’ve determined that all the goals and hopes and dreams and expectancies about my life that I hold dear to my heart like a badge are predicated by and dependant upon this one simple, pure suggestion:  Be a person who doesn’t suck.  Ultimately, everything else will fall into place if you can look at your reflection in the mirror and honestly say, “You don’t suck.”  You know what?  I don’t suck. 

At the end of this year of self-discovery, on the last leg of my existential quest to be the last one standing or whatever I met someone.  She will come to understand in time that I am in fact a crazy person and I’m okay with that.  I’m passionate about art and music and football and politics and people and love – and when I am, I’m ridiculous.  When I’m in the zone creatively, I pace and curse and chain-smoke and drink.  I laugh too loud at the wrong things all too often.  I talk to my dogs like they’re human.  I’m emotional.  I’m inappropriate.  I’m in a hurry.  I love curves and straight lines and Tuesdays and jars of paint and denim and clean sheets and baseball hats and street sweepers and bus fumes and the homeless.  I love being surprised and scared and nervous and overwhelmed and Lynyrd Skynrd and Black Sabbath and Georgia Satellites and creek banks.   I’m a dreamer and a skeptic and a fool and a believer.  I love early ‘90s gangster rap and making art and listening to old women talk and Adolf Hitler documentaries and puppies and sunsets and the color green and silence and mud and serial killers and Billie Holiday and whispering and screaming and holding hands and crunching leaves and nonsense and fire and chainsaws and naps.  I love the darkness and the light and the shadows between.  I love knowing the difference and being out of town and the call and the response.  I love the pause before something important.  I believe that pre-gaming NWA can get me through any client meeting unscathed.  I believe in mercy and judgment and Pringles and coming home and leaving and what my parents say.  I love distortion and clarity and daydreams and yesterday and tomorrow and forward and rumors and truth and condescension and facts and legends and being young and memory.   I can be an obnoxious, self-centered asshole and I’m not afraid that any of that will scare her away.  I’m 40 years old.  I could lose a few pounds and I should probably have a haircut and a shave, but I am finally the best case scenario me.  If ever there was a perfect time for us to meet, it is now. 

I wrote at the beginning of last year that the fruit is ripe with hope and promise.  I had no reason to believe that statement to be true at that point in my life, but I knew that I believed it for whatever reason; maybe it was in fact the blind faith I’d always rejected.  At this new beginning, my eyes are wide open and I believe that the fruit is truly ripe with hope and promise – for all the right reasons.