Resolutions: Week 1

New Years Resolutions Week One
The "Ow, My Balls" edition

Like many Americans I have set some goals for myself for the new year. Though, honestly, the main goal would have to be to not give up on other goals after one day of feeling like crap about something or another. Every year at this time millions sign up for gym memberships and every year by February everyone stops going to the gym. As it turns out, most people have the same trouble I have with the "stick-to-ittaness". Habits are hard to break. Lifestyles are fucking hard to change. If your new years resolution is to stop being such a dick to people, your still calling the old lady (at the grocery store, in front of you) writing a check and using coupons she clipped out of the penny saver a "time-wasting, pain in the ass of a useless old hag" by February. By then you've forgotten your grand declaration after your heart-warming Christmas that ended with you singing Christmas carols to a group of young orphans in front of the big town Christmas tree on New Years Eve. Sure, they proved to you that Santa was real and alive in everyone of us. But frankly thirty years of telling homeless people to get a job while kicking over their shopping carts full of cans is a bigger challenge to overcome than a single night of hope and joy can ever hope to over come.

So it seems silly to think that I will overcome whatever it was that I wanted to overcome in the new year. But at the same time its worth a try. Although not worth a try according to the so-called Nanny State wherein they say that New Years resolutions are bad because they may "may trigger feelings of failure and inadequacy" if you fail to achieve your goals. So that's what it was! I thought I was depressed because my life wasn't moving in the direction I wanted it to be, but no! It turns out I'm just sad because sometimes when I try something I don't automatically succeed! It's so obvious! I shouldn't be aiming for anything, I shouldn't give a thought to what I'm doing because, right or wrong, if I try something different I may not be good at it. And that makes me sad. To be fair to the UK, though, I have heard this advice before, from a very bright (yellow) man "I don't know. Trying is the first step towards failure" (yes, that man was Homer. Not the brilliant dead poet behind The Odyssey and The Iliad, but the brilliant Nuclear Safety Inspector behind the plot to steal a giant metal donut from a statue).

My first week in this Brave New Year has yet to yield many results. I started a detox to better my health before Christmas, gave it up, and started again on the first. I was better about what I was eating before, but overall I'm glad I had a little warm-up run of it before. After a few bad nights at the end of December I remembered an encounter I had with someone I hadn't seen in a long time I happened to run into in a Target the last time I was trying to make my life feel less like a depressing movie on the Lifetime channel. Not much of a conversation, but that day just had a good feeling to it. And I said something along the lines of "I've become unemployed and now I am happy". And for the first time in a long time felt genuinely happy with myself. Kind of a weird memory to base a series of goals for myself off of, but that was after a mere week of my regiment and all my anxieties were becoming just bad memories. Had I changed? Not that much, but my mind was clearing itself out. In the attic of my brain, I apparently had a lot of boxes piled up in front of the window. With a little effort light was starting to shine in again.

The downside to this year so far has been the constant pain I've had since it started. My body feels like its punching itself from the inside every time I fall asleep. I've got a cold, my head is stuffed up, my brain lacks any ability to focus on anything other than a singular line of thought. I keep thinking of a girl that I get the pessimistic feeling that on any given day I have a better chance of getting a restraining order from than a good-night kiss. I've been doing some reading on Zen/Dharma and an idea I've gotten from that, that I am paraphrasing the hell out of, is that desire is the root cause of suffering. I desire to be with this girl. I am not. I suffer emotional turmoil every time I think of her because of this. This problem has a solution, and it isn't the solution I'd like, I'd like it to be to win her over and be able to be with her. But the real answer seems to be somewhere around not having the desire to be with her anymore. If I remove the desire, I remove the discomfort I feel when I find myself lacking what I want. While I can logically see the reasoning behind that, I find it nearly impossible to remove that want.

While trying to find some sort of peace inside myself I instead find more and more conflict. It hurts. It hurts like a bitch. Emotionally I'm drained and physically I'm just exhausted.

In the end, I guess this is why so many resolutions fail. No one is going to knowingly put themselves into a situation that will cause a deal of suffering in their daily life for a while if they don't feel there is a reward for it at the end of the road. I honestly don't know that there is any sort of reward at the end of this road. I have to assume that everything I think I know about what I am doing is wrong. I have to remember that even if I think I know something will or won't work out I really don't know. That's really what trying is about. What happens in the future can't be seen. All I can do is keep trying and deal with those triggered feelings of inadequacy if they come up. I don't have any real insights.

Thankfully I don't have to have any insights, as I have watched a lot of movies, and remember a line from "Little Miss Sunshine" whenever I am feeling like this:

"{On Marcel Proust} French writer. Total loser. Never had a real job. Unrequited love affairs. Gay. Spent 20 years writing a book almost no one reads. But he's also probably the greatest writer since Shakespeare. Anyway, he, uh, he gets down to the end of his life, and he looks back and decides that all those years he suffered, Those were the best years of his life, 'cause they made him who he was. All those years he was happy? You know, total waste. Didn't learn a thing."