Jesus Christ - Is 2017 Coming?

I dread this week every year, more so this year than most.

The week between Christmas and New Years Day. January 1. My birthday. 63 this year.

Torturous week as I try to put the brakes on. As I look back at another year in which I disappointed myself and think about another year that promises...............if I only..............

No no no, I am not ready for another year. Gotta make changes, gotta find true peace, gotta achieve at a level to make myself proud.

But I haven't made plans. Don't have a road map. Don't know what the fuck to do or which direction to take.

Anybody foolish enough to read these pages on a regular basis knows I go through this every year.

I love my birthday on January 1 because it is such a clean break, a perfect line of demarcation. New year for the world. New year of my life.

Being the introspective lad that I am, it is also the perfect time to review and reflect. The fact that it is a new year for everybody adds more weight to the fact that it is also my birthday.

Along with everybody else I am hoping for a better year. And I am marking the end of another year of my life and the beginning of another chance.

I make promises, I avoid promises, I make grand and sweeping statements, I say vulgar and direct things. I am all over the map year after year as I struggle to make sense and success out of this thing called life.

A little heavier this year. I semi-retired in 2016, which should have been a sweetly supreme moment. Turned out not to be as pretty as I hoped thanks to a misunderstanding with the social security administration.

I was diagnosed with cancer in August of 2016. Real eye opener, that one.

A year that should have been one of the best of my life came up a hell of a lot shorter than that.

I am bone tired with disappointment.

So here I am. Again.

Gonna do a whole hell of a lot of thinking over the next seven days. Tired of making excuses for myself. Tired of others making excuses for me.

I am a better man than I have shown the world. I have left a lot in the tank. What the world knows is only the tip of the iceberg. What I know is an entire ocean.

Got a saying hanging on the wall. Been there for years. Many years.

"To change one's life, start immediately. Do it flamboyantly. No exceptions. No excuses." William James.

That appeals to me on Day One of introspection week 2016. I need to flail and thrash about, and to make a lot of noise. I need to not back off, ever, under any circumstances, blowback or judgments.

I have been too careful over the years, which is bizarre because my personality is not a careful one.

I am a lunatic on a chain. Might serve me well to get my hands on a hacksaw in 2017.

We'll see. I will try to refine this as I go. I know you can't fucking wait to hear what I have to say.

I am tempted to wax dramatic and say that if I don't get to where I want to be in 2017 I will just fucking give up. Just lay about drinking whiskey and moving along like a subservient fool until they shut me up with shovel fulls of dirt.

But I am not there yet.