Shedding Don't Come Easy

 Sometimes you have to shed who you were to live who you are.

It's Ironic

 My life is draining the life out of me.

The Jackson Effect

I have made my impression on my family and friends.

It's cast in concrete; indelible.

For better or worse, they have their opinions, their criticisms, their appreciations - based on decades of me doing what I do. My opinion of what their impressions are might not sync with their reality, but I am not happy with what I believe those opinions to be.

Jackson is ten months old. I can make him laugh. I can hold him and hug him and love him. This is the easy stuff - he's not discriminating yet.

I do believe we have made an emotional connection. I love intensely; it springs from my heart and soul with a ferocity that cannot be misinterpreted. I am sensitive and empathetic with a dizzying earnestness.  

That's just who I am - the King of Emotion. And I think Jackson has picked up on that. When I hold him and talk to him and make funny faces for him, I feel like he just knows he's being loved, that he is safe, no worries, no fear, no doubt.

I could be mistaken. I could be full of shit. I could be perceiving what I want to perceive. I could be wrong.

But I'm not.

Reality is looming just over the horizon, though. Won't be long before he gets to really know me, and he will form opinions.

I don't want him to know the me I am now.

I am fighting really hard to change my life right now; it is all I can think about. I don't like parts of it; I'm finding it harder and harder to live with myself as is.

I have very little time left. If I died right now I would be pissed at the impressions I left behind. I would be roasting in hell thinking how badly I wasted my one shot at life.

And The Devil would be laughing.

Jackson is a fresh, new, and precious life. He is my grandson. I will be around for only a small part of his life.

I want that part to shine, to blow him away, to make him think and talk about me with respect and love and amazement when I'm gone. 

I want him to remember me as a force of nature.

Accept The Good

Watched a movie last night - Things We Lost in the Fire - Benicio del Toro, Halle Berry, David Duchovny.

Watch it. It is intense, it is human - it makes you feel, it makes you think.

Duchovny's character has a pet phrase - "accept the good." When Halle Berry is talking to Benicio (a heroin addict), he's talking about the hard things in his life and she says "accept the good", because he does have good things in his life.

Perfect. Accept the good. It makes so much more sense than today's typical bullshit, like "live your best life." Nobody, no normal person, is living their best life. The fact that we are human and we are the bottom 99%, makes it impossible.

And gratefulness seems like a wimpy cop out; your life is a struggle, a marathon run on razor blade road in bare feet - but you're supposed to be grateful for what you have, even though it falls far short of what you expected, what you deserve.

"Accept the good" is perfect because it is not over the top. Life may be a cesspool of unfulfilled expectations, but good things do come around, however small they may be.

Don't push them away. Accept them. Roll them around in your mind, caress them with your emotions, anesthetize your hurt with them. So ten minutes later, when the next bucket of shit gets dumped on your head, you will have had relief. Maybe made a memory you can use like a temporary painkiller, if it's strong enough.

Don't overdo it. No grand statements, like "living your best life." No wimpy gratefulness, as weak as overcooked pasta.

Accept the good and move on.

That's about as good as it gets.

You Gotta Bleed

So few, extraordinarily marginal victories; so many crushing defeats.

Like trying to exist on a diet of pulverized rock and broken glass.

Meaningful Words Deconstructed

 "Am I young enough to believe in revolution?"

Not just revolution. Change. Forward movement. Acquisition of knowledge and wisdom.

"Am I strong enough to get down on my knees and pray?"

To ask for help. To admit to weakness and confusion.

"Am I high enough on the chain of evolution to respect myself, and my brother and my sister?"

Respect myself - so fucking important. And others; indispensable.

"And perfect myself in my own peculiar way."

To work at being the best person you can be, staying true to your own unique soul.

The quoted lyrics are from Pilgrim's Progress, by Kris Kristofferson.

The agonizing and unrequited striving to make those words reality, is my own.

I Compare Myself

to everyone in my life who is right around my age.

I come up short.

A high percentage, a very high percentage, of people my age are fully retired.

I am not.

I know a fair amount of people five or six years younger than me who are retired.

All of these people are living life effortlessly and smiling a lot.

These people, every single one of them, are obviously smarter than I am. Much smarter.

This disturbs me. I used to think I was smart. Until I got past 65.

And the older I get, the stupider I get. Unless I maneuver a way to retire.

Or die.

A Mantra For Survival in 2025

Everything I think, do, and say is completely justified.

Everything.

Every fucking thing.

Justice

 I should be living in New Orleans.

I am not.

I should be living in Austin, Texas.

I am not.

What the ever-loving fuck happened? Who dropped the ball?

"Objection, Your Honor - question asked and answered."

"Objection sustained."

Tick Fucking Tock

 No time for fatigue.

No room for doubt.

Solutions

 Bad day, bad mood.

Considering consuming a violent quantity of whiskey tonight.

Tick Fucking Tock

 It's too late to be afraid.

Sick of It

 Every person who drives by me in a Lincoln is my enemy.

Suicide (Christmas Is Over)

Took the decorations down today.

Always a melancholy event.

There is something inexplicable about the lights. Soothing. Inspiration for reflection. Gazing, thinking, evaluating, appreciating. Or just vegging out, shutting thoughts down.

I wasn't into Christmas as much as I thought I would be. 

The Jackson effect is powerful; the mere fact that he is around instigated many smiles as I lounged in the recliner. Christmas Eve and Christmas day were excellent, exactly what my soul needed. But generally, my mind managed to sabotage the good feelings when I was alone with my thoughts.

The bloom is off the rose.

Been here 14 months and change. Reality sunk its claws into me recently and my tortured mind is casting about for solutions.

Gotta deal with a vicious landlord who wants to destroy our lives. So there's that. And I gotta dig up bagfuls of money if I ever hope to experience peace of mind. I really would like to retire, you know.

So........................I'm thinking and plotting and planning, and the responsibility of it all, the reality of it all, is stripping the flesh from my bones.

There's time. Got a chunk of change in the bank, so a horrific ending is not imminent. But it will be if I don't stumble upon answers.

But, what the fuck, you don't want to hear about this and I don't want to talk about it.

Went to Christmas Eve service in Craig's church with Jackson, Amanda, Craig, and Carol. I enjoyed it. There's something about being in a church that soothes me deeply, even as a lifelong sinner. Got me some peace that night.

New Year's Eve in Nashville (NO - I wasn't there, but I sure as hell wish I was), Jelly Roll singing Need A Favor.

"I only talk to God when I need a favor, and I only pray when I ain't got a prayer, so, who the hell am I, who the hell am I, to expect a Savior, oh, if I only talk to God when I need a favor?"

I don't pray, but there is a space in my soul that longs to be saved, for my problems to be solved - I don't want to fight anymore, I want my life to caress me lovingly instead of prompting me relentlessly to come up with solutions.

I want smooth. I want tranquility. I want no worries.

But I got no right to ask for that. 

So I'll keep my fists up and hope I can take off the gloves someday before I hit the canvas. I am tired, been that way for a long time, but the past 14 months gave me a taste of joy.

It was delicious.

I want more.

The Promise of The New Year

 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.

Duane Allman - From January 1, 1969 to January 1, 2025

 "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.

2025 Has Arrived

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.

Add One More To The Tally

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.