It’s been a year. I try and tell myself that it’s just another day and not to let the melancholy musings of time and space weigh down on the soul. It’s an arbitrary construct — the calendar year just as easily could run from the Julian July to July as it does January to December. But there’s no denying the earth has gone round the sun a full cycle no matter where we put the start line. It’s the distance and the time and that’s the course we run.
I’m heavier than I’ve been in years. There’s grey hairs poking out at my temples. The lines are longer on the face but fortunately sometimes from laughs.
I’m feeling low. I have been feeling low.
I’m feeling slow. I have been feeling slow.
I’m feeling old. I have been feeling old.
In 2017, I had some great adventures with Mom and my brother. I got to hang out with friends near and far. I had it far easier than most — I should be thankful and happy and I try and be… I try and just be… but this time of year, even in the best of years, leaves me feeling down. And this year, despite a lot of good things for me, felt like a rough year for the world as a whole.
I’m having a hard time motivating myself to get up and go. There are a lot of things that I tried to do this year that never got off the ground… or things that I tried to change that had me raging against the sky, my voice unheard (I’m looking at you neighbors who park overnight on the street in contravention of the HOA covenants and create an obstacle course a videogame maker would deem masocore — a combination of complex mechanics and intense difficulty that results in a feeling of impossibility and requires such lengthy trial and error as to frustrate players into giving up).
The glass half full (or more) types would say that the new year is a clean slate, a means to start again, to strive for change and betterment. That new year’s resolutions are jumper cables to the soul.
Of late I’ve been describing myself as a mal vivant, a glass if 3/4 empty guy.
I’m just trying to make it to the next dawn.
***
My goal for 2018 is to view it as one giant game of Jenga.
Tomorrow, on the 1st of January, the year is one solid block and I’ll begin pushing and pulling, nudging and prodding, and extracting a piece at a time to stack on top of the year in the hopes of building something a bit higher.
It may not be stable, it may all come collapsing down, but perhaps there will be new heights, new configurations, new *somethings* to create, to behold, to experience before then.
