Exhale (For Now)

There. That's done.

Christmas is over. I feel 500 pounds lighter today. It is so strange. Christmas was weighing on my mind like an elephant sitting on my skull. 

I feel light today. Happy. I exercised. Ate a bowl of oatmeal. 

My final theory is that as a dramatically emotional guy, this year has been slowly eroding my ability to function. 

Had to put Lakota down in January. Broke our hearts. Had an MRI in January which led to the discovery in November that I have some nasty cancerous spots on my prostate. Carol endured 20 hours - twenty - of surgery in February over a period of two days.

7 and 1/2 hours of brain surgery scared me to death in 2017. This was worse. On the second day I spent large chunks of time sitting in the waiting room bent over with my head in my hands. I could not do anything else. I was that broken.

Then along came Covid.

I have been getting progressively shorter of temper and more depressed as 2020 rolls along.

Thanksgiving was stressful until we made The Decision. It didn't kill me. Christmas is just too emotional a holiday, too filled with melancholy in my humble opinion. That pretty much did me in.

Here comes 2021. Here comes my birthday.

I will get all twisted up this week. This all feels heavier than usual to me. I feel like a fool for pissing my life away. And I can say with confidence and honesty that I have pissed my life away. I know it in my bones.

The usual qualifier is that on the personal side, the family side, I could not have been luckier. My god, what man could ask for a more tolerant wife than Carol. And loving. Keith and Craig - I can never quite put into words what they mean to me although I try and try and try.

They are everything to me.

It's the professional part of my life that I wasted. I should have done so much more. And I should have been involved in creative pursuits. Not fucking accounting. Not business. I was so far off base.

I am The King of Underachievers. 

I am going to conduct a dangerous exercise. I have been writing in here since 2011. Nine years.

I am going to go back and go through all my year end entries. It will be painful because it will be repetitive.

I hate my life, I hate myself and on and on and on. You know the drill.

It will be painful because it will be so obvious that I complained about the same things over and over again and did nothing to bring about change.

For Christ sake, Joe - why do that to yourself?

To kick my own ass. 2020 shook me up. It has slowly paralyzed me.

I have to find an answer. I have to.

I am hoping that confronting my own weakness in my own words year after year after year will finally wake me the fuck up.

I am running out of options.

And time.