dog days

I am so happy to be saying goodbye to 2012.  We're supposed to cherish any time we get, and to say the whole year has been void of moments worth remembering would be inaccurate, but overall, this year has been a bad one.

This one is on me.

I've got big plans for 2013.  I'm getting too old for this shit.

inbetween

The sun is up on down again.  The sky feels dark for ever.  Thunder in my eardrums.  Windshield eyeglasses and resting wrists.  Perched and parched, my body burning up on the inside.  Now bells and soft voices.  Strumming on whispers.

"Go dancing with someone.  Turn our backs to the battle."

This is going to be a strange couple of days.

spark

I do it every year.  I fixate on the 31st of December once that page is flipped over on the calendar all month, telling myself that next year will be different.  If I can just get it all out of my system in the weeks and days leading up to the end of the month...almost force myself to hate all that is holding me down, or what I perceive is holding me down...and purge it from my life in time for the countdown to midnight, everything will turn around.  New Year's resolutions, for me, are like a yearly personal 10 Commandments of desired self improvement. But with lines and stuff.  Ultimately, however, it results in near-immediate failure, and sets a sour tone for the rest of the Winter...if I'm lucky.

I know its just another day like today is just another day, and not, as many have been led to contemplate, the end of the world.  a clean slate. December 31st offers me a day to reflect.  I used to celebrate with family and friends.  It was fun.  Then the hangovers got to be more and more epic, and the fun less and less so.  The first New Years Eve I spent on my own, I caught Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring in a near empty theatre.  It became tradition the following two years.  I was partied out.  Instead of spending the night in a quest for dizzying entertainment, I allowed the myth of the new year to invigorate my desire for change.  I do it every month too...those fresh boxes on the calender always look so conquerable, but mere days in, and I'm losing yet another mini-war with myself...but that change of that last number really seems to scream clean slate.  I crave a clean slate/.

This year is no different.  Its been a bad year, plain and simple.  I've got positives to take away from it, no doubt.  I've maintained a friendship with someone who is very important to me who I thought might be out of my life by now.  I've climbed up another rung on the family   tree ladder, where I'm at least starting to feel like an adult when I'm in the same room as my parents.  My financial situation is pretty bleak...but I give myself a lot of credit for not letting it get completely out of hand.  I've plugged a few holes and done without for long stretches this year in order to keep costs down.  I'm not proud of the year I've had by any means...my health is the worst its maybe ever been...but all in all, if this is bottom, I'll take it.  I certainly hope that's not me asking for more trouble...I really don't think that's the case...but I do seem to have a bit of an unlucky air about myself over the past decade or so, so its not totally out of the question.  Determined isn't the right word...far too strong for someone in my shoes.  Hopeful.  I'm hopeful.  I am.  Not full of hope.  I wish!  No, I'm not in a great state of mind these days, but I can't say the flame isn't flickering...and for a while there, it felt like maybe I'd gone out.    

here comes the sun

I don't know what's going on.

I am a buffet table of emotions these days.  Reach in and you'll find everything from excitement to dread...pain, apathy, hunger, fulfillment, compassion, bitterness...I could go on.  I'm all over the place. The noise both delights and frustrates me to no end.  I'm alive again, but I'm a fucking jumble, a puzzle right out of the box sitting there on the dining room table in pieces.  I capable of putting the pieces back together, but I don't know if I want to leave it up to me anymore?  I think I'm going to need help this time...you know, to get it right?  Once and for all.  And he lived happily ever after?

Dreams, dreams.  I guess we all have them.  Mine just happen to be foggy visions of sunshine and the sound of the ocean.  I think my 18 year old self really knew what I wanted...only somehow the sound of the world drowned him out over time.  

Now I don't think about paradise or the ocean...I think about how I can shave off as much debt as quickly as possible, or how I really don't have anything in the fridge. Reality has a sneaky way of making its presence felt...but its constant and unrelenting...and never lets you drift off like you used to, to happier times to come.