It's January 2, 2025.
Oh my god, is this the promise of the new year?
Holy shit, is this all there is? Where's the magic?
Kidding. Get on with it. This is reality, baby
Bend to the yoke, do your job, and fucking deal with the consequences.
Have a good day.
"This year I will be more thoughtful of my fellow man, exert more effort in each of my endeavors, professionally as well as personally. Take love wherever I find it, and offer it to everyone who will take it. In this coming year I will seek knowledge from those wiser than me and try to teach those who wish to learn from me. I love being alive and I will be the best man I possibly can."
From Duane Allman's journal on January 1, 1969
I need to break this down a little bit this year.
The most important words are about exerting more effort. I need to try, to really fucking try, in everything I do. Professionally and personally. In other words, every minute of every day I need to be aware of what I'm doing, and I need to assess whether it's the right thing to do. If not then I need to make adjustments. Sounds tiring but at this stage in my life it is fucking critical.
This will lead to me being the best man I possibly can. I have tried and failed before, I have failed to try before.
I want to be the best man I possibly can. I yearn for that evolution. I need the peace of mind that will result from getting there.
"I love being alive". I never think that way. Never have. I'm too busy being unhappy. And by doing that, I'm pissing my life away, decade after decade.
I need to start loving being alive because it won't be long before that's taken away from me.
It's here and I'm still circling the drain.
Motivation:
"Am I young enough to believe in revolution
Am I strong enough to get down on my knees and pray
Am I high enough on the chain of evolution
To respect myself, and my brother and my sister
And perfect myself in my own peculiar way"
From Pilgrim's Progress, by Kris Kristofferson
I need words to inspire me. I need the strength to follow through with those words. This lyric says a lot, and it resonates with the kind of man I want to be.
When I turmed 70 it was somewhat frightening, but it's also a milestone. I did not freak out too much.
71 is heavier because it implies momentum. Moving towards 80, and to me 80 is the line of demarcation. I am aware of so many people admitting that when they hit 80 they really started to fall apart. It's embezzled in my brain and I fear it.
I recently read Al Pacino's autobiography. In it, as he was discussing age, he said in his seventies he had to make some adjustments but nothing he couldn't live with. But when he hit 80, things got a lot tougher.
He is a successful and fulfilled man. I am still trying to make sense of my life. 80 is going to be cataclysmic for me. I fear it.
You are laughing, I don't blame you. You're thinking "Here we go again. He's gonna tell us about everything he needs to do to get fulfilled. To justify his life. Then he won't do any of it."
You may be right. But today I'm feeling motivated, afraid, unsure, and fucking angry. I need the anger to put me over the top. I'm hoping that's the secret sauce because I am really fucking angry.
What a fool I've been. Compromising my life, being who I am not, hiding who I really am, bending over for other people, not getting out of life what my soul needs to flourish. Just fucking being weak time after time after time until I became invisible.
I was born to be a supernova, not some fucking shadow.
Once again, I'm gonna give it a shot.
Addtional motivators:
1) "Perhaps even in darkness the soul can be healed before the last warm pulse of life fades"
From Cemetery Road, by Greg Iles
AND
2) "He tortured no one so much as he tortured himself" - random quote I picked up somewhere. My point is that it's tough enough doing battle with life without doing battle with yourself on top of it.
Fuck my past failures.
Well, Jimmy Carter made the cut.
Something you don't know: Jimmy Carter had a relationship with The Allman Brothers Band. They played a number of concerts to raise money for Carter's campaign, which was struggling financially. He liked their music and he considered them friends. Carter's daughter Amy gave Gregg Allman a tour of the White House.
In Jimmy Carter's own words: "I'm proud of my relationship with The Allman Brothers Band. They are good people, they are my friends, and anybody who wants a President who doesn't like music like this, and who doesn't like people who make music like this, should simply vote for another man."
That is one cool President.
This is an exciting time of year.
How many celebrity deaths will occur in the next two days to pad the 2024 total?
There are too many people waking up today with Merry Fucking Christmas on their lips.
Drug addicts, alcoholics, Stage IV cancer patients.
And everyday broken people. People living miserable lives with no chance of happiness. People who will never retire, who will work until they die. And die in poverty.
People whose dreams have been shattered by circumstance or by their own stupidity.
People who never had dreams, who recognized life for what it is and kept their heads down and plodded through their existence like donkeys.
Your garden variety humans for whom life was never a miracle, but drudgery, a road littered with razor blades, and hidden bombs triggered by tragic missteps resulting from incomprehension, despair, and tunnel vision.
Zombies who feel nothing because they shut their emotions down long ago. Emotions that never served them but to disappoint.
Cold, lonely people indistinguishable from corpses.
People to whom Christmas lights are no different than spotlights in a prison yard.
Merry Fucking Christmas.
I am not one of them. I have a lot, more than I need. Maybe more than I deserve. That possibility exists. I am only partially grateful because I have not evolved. Still, it's Christmas morn and I am somewhat buoyant.
Why not? Got me a loving family, both close to the heart and extended. And a grandson. A GRANDSON. Friends. New home, new community. Possibilities.
I am not where I want to be, not even close to who I thought I'd be.
But I am. I feel. I breathe. I get around.
A magic day. Dinner with the family. And time to reflect upon it all tonight when I get home and settle into the recliner with Patsy and Emmy Lou in my lap, Carol on the couch next to me, lights off, Christmas tree lit and the TV performing its relentless lobotomy.
Merry Christmas.
Today is Christmas Eve. Tomorrow is Christmas day.
And everyone is wondering.....Christ, he's not gonna write that empty driveways/crowded driveways drivel again, is he?
