Mea Culpa. 2021.

It is January 1, 2021.

A sacred day for me.

I did my homework, as promised. Read through 8 years of year-end posts. Nothing surprising and I did not expect to be surprised. I know myself. I know my pain. I know my shortcomings. I know how I whine.

But it was heavy to read through this pain year after year after year. The same complaints, the same bleak outlook.

There were themes. Always trying to lose weight, a strong and consistent sense of negativity about life and about my life, a sense that I tried and failed over and over again, failing to reach my potential, hating the jobs I worked, the desire to make my life meaningful, to do something with it, self delusion about who I could have been.

Solid, interesting quotes:

2012 - Years come and go. Some are good, some are bad. I can accept that but I cannot accept that I contributed to my own failure.

2013 - I need the truth. My own truth. Not anybody else's. I no longer feel I have a tomorrow in my life. I am three days away from 60. I no longer have a tomorrow. I have only a today.

2015 - Your life is the only thing you have. The only thing, and it blows by at faster miles an hour. My track record for change and resurrection sucks.

2017 - However, I always felt that New Year's Eve madness is a strange mix of hope and hopelessness.

2019 - Jesus fucking Christ. Time moves fast. For a while life dribbles out of you. Then it gushes like blood from a severed artery.

The heaviest years were 2014 and 2017. In 2014 Sarge and Jonathan died. In 2017 Carol had a mastectomy and a tumor removed from her brain. I said all the predictable things.

In 2014 I said "You have to fight to make your life meaningful. The more loss you experience the more driven you become to make a statement, to actually do something with your life."

In 2017 I said "But in another way, I know Carol will continue to fight like the warrior that she is. I also know that I am committed to doing everything in my power to make our life better. This is on my shoulders."

Still, I did nothing.

The point is I have whined about the same shit for 9 years now. And even when I came up against unspeakable tragedy and pain, I did not change. At moments when life teaches you a serious lesson, I did not learn.

I am weak. I don't try hard enough. 

I have to learn to love myself. If you don't love yourself everything else is tainted. Nothing works. I am as tainted as they come.

I have had enough. I don't like my life or myself and it is my fault that this is the way it is.

I want 2021 to be the year I find happiness, self-love and peace of mind. I want it more than ever. It is entirely up to me.

On "Hill Street Blues" a common expression among the characters was "I'll have a good thought." When someone was sick or going through a difficult time Sipowicz would say "I'll have a good thought." Not thoughts and prayers, not my heart goes out, not I am so sorry.

I always thought that expression was so powerful. Simple and meaningful. "I'll have a good thought." The power of the mind, the power of truly caring.

In 2021 I am going to work to have a good thought.

About me.