The Blank Pages Ahead

hello, stranger -

and so the new year started off with a bang, as they tend to do every year - if, by a bang you mean the general hush of a blanket of promises to oneself to hit all the right marks this year, to shape up and fly right, or - at the very least - to stop driving things into a ditch at the worst possible moment. yup - if that's what comes to mind when you hear the word “bang”, then the fireworks are still going off like crazy out here.

they are for me anyways. it's the end of the first week, and i've worked myself to a state of happy exhaustion, and i'm grateful for it. it took me the standard few days to shake off the holiday funk, but there’s some hidden relief in that too that helps add to the sense of new year resolve, like after some alcoholic aunt who you never even invited to dinner finally leaves.   sure it was awkward and half-hearted and she accidentally set the kitchen on fire,  but oh the joy of watching her car pull away and knowing she won’t be back for at least a year.

but as uniquely painful as these past holidays were, they were far from the most gruesome i've ever had, and there's at least light on the horizon this time around. there really is something invigorating about the clean slate of a brand new year, and once it got rolling things started to shape up. the promise of a new year really began to start shining through the gray of the winter skies, so whatever self-abuse i had in me to do got done before New Year's, and now there’s nothing but blank pages ahead.

the question is, though - how long before those pages start to get messy again? how long before those twin, lurking demons of doubt and self-sabotage come slipping out of the shadows and rear their ugly heads? how long before this fresh ride starts to go off the rails just like all the times before?

and is that all there is to life, anyways?  just a non-stop cycle of trying to overcome ourselves, and whatever subconscious, automatic bullshit that's been hardwired into our brains since before we could even form memories? is there any way to really get off this merry-go-round once and for all?

since I crash landed out here all those years ago now i've done enough soul-searching and digging around in the attic of my mind to make a career of it almost. i've prayed, meditated, journaled, done yoga and breathing exercises, and followed a breadcrumb trail through a wilderness of books, videos, and social media posts that ranged from the most rugged, no-nonsense pieces of impossibly hard-core advice, to the most gooey, woo-woo fluff ball cosmic pearls of wisdom.

much of it was absolutely wretched, and i knew it at the time. but i ate it all up anyways just so i could glean whatever traces of wisdom they might hold and then spit up the bad parts afterwards. i treated it like a job – more important than a job, really. because i knew i was adrift and lost and needed to find my way. but i also knew the like so many others of the directionless and unguided of the latchkey era, it was being adrift and lost that got me here in the first place, so nothing would really change until i figured this shit out.

then a while back i'm sitting in a bar with a friend and he says to me about a topic i don't even remember at this point, he says “yeah – everyone wants to be a lion, until it's time to start doing lion shit.”

and boom. just like that – there it was, all laid out for me nice and clean for me.  bar stool wisdom at it’s finest.

that was a few months ago now i think, i can’t quite remember how long.  but i guess sometimes it takes a while between when you listen to the words and when they finally sink in. and it may have taken me wading through a seemingly endless swamp of self-help bullshit to find that nugget of wisdom, but at least it got me to a place where i could finally hear it.

i take nothing for granted about this upcoming year though, and despite the surge of new years positivity i know the the personal challenges ahead are bound to be daunting, even overwhelming at times.  add to that the crazy state of the world being broadcast from any news cycle and it’s enough to make anybody want to turn around immediately and head back under the covers a box of chocolates or a bottle of scotch. viewed through that lens and the calendar ahead seems to be almost crackling with radioactivity.

but i can’t control that.  no one can. so if there’s any new years resolution here it would just be to have at it everyday, fight off those dark shadows as best as one can whenever they close in, and not forget to keep trying to do lion shit whenever possible.  because these days ahead truly are wide open, each one a blank page, just like they have been before.  it’s just remembering what’s in the pen that counts the most.

hope your new year has started off as a good one, be good and i’ll be in touch again soon.