New Year, Old Me?

::Insert cliche about how fast the time went::

Despite my recent absence from this page, I’d like to keep the tradition of birthday/New Year’s resolution making. After all, this year was “Stick to the plan” year, so I should stick to my plan of making plans. Or something like that.

Did I stick to my plans?

Nope. Not even close.

Three months into the year the plans got chucked out the window. The only plan after that was to survive.

In some ways I believe I am better off than I was at the start of the year. With such turbulence often comes a new breadth of wisdom. I have learned and grown and adapted myself to chaos in a way that I always struggled to do before.

In many other ways my life is not so good. It’s obvious that my resolutions should be aimed at fixing those specific problems, right ? Unfortunately, most of life is a complicated web of circumstances, so tweaking one or two things isn’t going to change much. If last year was “Stick to the plan” this year can be summed up as:

“Relearn to be me.”

I kinda want to get back to the person I was at 15. Not the immaturity and the youthful ignorance, mind you. I want to rediscover the good qualities of my youth and combine them with the wisdom of my current age.

I was confident back then. I was warm. I had real friends. I genuinely cared about people and I genuinely loved my own talents and gifts. I had a sense of humor and the ability to be genuinely happy and excited about life.

Grow a beard!

Twenty years on I feel like I have lost all of that. My confidence was largely dependent on exercising my talents. But now my talents sit in the corner covered in dust. I am a faded version of my old self.

Stress and exhaustion have left me a bit bitter and grumpy. As a result I seem cold and aloof. I have acquaintances, but no one gets close enough to be a friend. I still care about people, but I’m often overly consumed with my own self loathing to love others properly.

It’s going to be an uphill trek. Circumstances were different then, with age comes responsibility and obligations. And so many struggles. I react quite caustically to hard times. When the going gets tough, I drown. There is hardly ever a time to catch my breath.

I have already started working towards these resolutions. I applied to a new job. Just filling out the resume and creating a cover letter was a confidence booster. I used to hate doing them because I despised tooting my own horn, but this time I actually looked at what I wrote. I haven’t completely relinquished my talents.

Those are real accomplishments and real experiences that I have had. I have used my talents in a variety of ways, and each of them is something to be proud of. And if they help me get this job, that is all the more reason to be positive about them.

I plan to force myself off of social media and get into the real world. Social media is a cold, terrible place to interact with others. Real human interaction is a breeding ground for warmth and real relationship. This is probably the most difficult part of relearning to be myself. The entire culture has shifted in the past 20 years to be dominated by fake screen relationships. It’s almost an act of rebellion to seek real people out and make friends of them. But I need friends. Real ones. That I can drink a beer with. So rebellion it is!

“Lesser” things include working out to improve my health and self-esteem, working on my appearance overall (it’s hard to like yourself if you’re a slob), and liking what I like un-self-consciously.

I used to have my own tastes, even weird ones, and it didn’t matter what others thought. Over time I started to care what others think about my likes and dislikes. This is a tremendously crippling worry. Nearly everyone struggles with peer pressure to some extent. But I feel like I lost my entire self to it.

Too true. Source

This year I intend to embrace my own tastes, even the “weird” ones. This includes embracing my own talents, even if others aren’t as impressed as I’d like them to be.

I also intend to be warmer to people. I’m going to start smiling more and try a little friendliness. This may not be as much of a return to my past as it is just trying to be a better person. I don’t have to be the creepy silent dude or a mumbler. Friendliness is often reciprocated, and if it’s not oh well. At least my smile brightened up my own day.

What are some of your resolutions this year?

Taking Time

“Take time for yourself.” They say.

I’ve never thought that way. Sure, I will sit around and waste time. I will neglect my responsibilities and fixate on some unimportant project. I may even stare at a screen for several hours chasing Wikipedia trails or harvesting endless memes.

But is that time for myself?

That’s just settling. Or being irresponsible. Irresponsible if I’m not doing what I should. Settling if I’m not doing what truly makes me happy.

I don’t enjoy spinning my wheels. There has to be an end product to most of my activities. It could be as simple as a clean room. Yes, I do take joy in cleaning, much of the time. Call me crazy.

But some “activities” have no lasting effect. Some things have to be enjoyed for their own sake. Some things can be undertaken even if the end result isn’t exactly what you hoped for. You still gained experience with whatever it is.

Grumpy “Parrot”, Oil pastels on Paper, 2019

Though I have been fairly absent from this site I assure you that I have been productive. Mainly I have been keeping up with my other page, posting every single painting I have ever done. Doing that with a commentary on each one is no small feat.

I’ve also been writing in my “journal” more. Writing by hand tends to slow one down and force him to focus and think about each word (not to mention spelling without a crutch). Most of that will never see the light of day on here. No one may ever read it, it may never help me be productive on this page, but at least it helped me through the difficulties of life for a time.

There is a certain temptation to air all my dirty laundry here. This could easily become just a public diary to gripe about my struggles. But personal matters are often best kept personal, especially when they involve others. So I have tended to stay away from here, just so I don’t fall prey to that temptation.

Honestly, “time for myself” is often just as simple as sitting down and writing out a train of thought that’s been bugging me. Clearing my head and organizing thoughts on a page is frequently all I need to do to relieve the stress of my day.

But sometimes it’s not.

And I have no idea what to do instead.

Kinda done with it all right now…