Blue Ribbons and Participation Trophies for those who Need them:

Blue Ribbons and Participation Trophies for those who Need them:

A request for decency and civility to return to civil service.

Not your usual work, but what can be at this hour on a Saturday? This isn't when people — at least not the people I identify as my people — have any business trying to do any real work. Yet, here we are, with a Government shut down and a Captain screaming he's going to go full speed to teach that iceberg a damn lesson. It's madness in all directions, a sobering moment under grey, New England, skies. It's a hard moment to be a patriot, to hang onto the dwindling fire of hope, and it's damn near too dark to try and pen any words at all. However, like the progress we so desperately need to start making, here I am. I'm trying, the same as I'm asking the rest of everyone else to do. After all, what's the point in asking for something that you, yourself, are not actually willing to do? 

This kind of spiteful thinking, that you've any right to ask for what you yourself would not give, is what's choking America out while the giant slumbers. Airports, something I consider of great personal importance as of late, are jammed. Tax returns are delayed, assuming they come at all, and the even the sun seems to be in active protest in the northern skies. Two days of it since October, and who can blame it? Coming out these days, regardless of how you mean it, seems a dangerous endeavor. From stepping out your door, to stepping into yourself, the world seems ready as ever to bite and bludgeon you just for being a part of it. This, ladies and gentlemen, boys, girls, and others, is not how we make it — and we've got limited days to do that as it is.

It's just that, the winding sands of the hourglass, the ever present black rabbit, that makes the participation so important. Man — and by that I mean humankind, not just Man in that, cotton-haired, raisins, who sit in fancy leather chairs making decisions without pay at the moment sense of the word — has got to be an active participant in change. There's no greater enemy of progress than apathy and nothing rots the ripe fruit faster than a plant who's not trying to grow. There's only so many hours you can while away in nothing, whittling down your existence without a passion to drive you, banking on the blind hope that things will go anywhere without you doing something. Sure, maybe you'll get lucky, maybe you'll invoke Chaos Theory and your sneeze will change the world in some unmentionable way, but why sit back on your laurels when you can do so much more?

You're a human being, capable of impossible things. You can think, adapt, and change. You can be more than your environment, you can be more than your job, your apartment, or your vocation. Even I, who would likely drown if not penning words in some fashion, can be more than a writer. Don't get me wrong, I must write if I want to have any hope of feeling fulfilled, but that's a personal assessment of the situation and likely the only recourse left to a human too bleary eyed and unsavory for "real work". It's an understanding I have for the life I want to live and what I must do in order to have that life. It's being an active participant in my own existence. It's taking the wheel and saying "This ride is mine, mine, mine." It's being responsible for myself and not waiting for all the lights on my path turn green before I even bother pulling out of the metaphorical driveway.

I wonder then, why so much of Washington remains mired behind red lights and calls that traumatic behavior any kind of progress. America has become the jester on the world stage, a peasant locked in the stocks and worthy of being stoned with rotten fruit for crimes to heinous to let loose from the mouth. If we're not the butt of the joke, we're Night on Bald Mountain; a piece of music believed to be the very work of the Devil himself and something that she be cause to cover the ears less the infernal malady spread to the heart and rot us from the inside out.

We're trying to shame people for dancing and, apt and inappropriate as it is, we're calling out Motherfucker in forums deserving of more respect. We're engaging in mud fights with pigs — slinging shit like arrows in the vain hope of striking some kind of bullseye. This kind of thing, it's not helping anyone. It's making it all just look that much worse. It's making the rest of the world see the American people as little more than rabid coyotes responding deforestation by taking to roaming the streets in packs. Just look at Hollywood. It's only a matter of time before the beasts figure out how to walk upright, get jobs as Baristas and begin feeding on the rich when they go to order a latte. Soon, the hills and heights of that city will be unlivable as they will be populated by little more than lycanthropes. It'll be hell for everyone on a full moon, worse than it currently is that's for sure, and we'll have no National Guard to call on because they're too busy being deployed to build a fence.

Shit's getting way too real on the West End of the world. Don't get me wrong, there are high spots. We're pardoning drug offenders in droves because we've finally figured out that those who want to get stoned by way of a plant aren't the same boogeymen as the stone throwers themselves.  We're electing rational minds to those same fancy seats and finally starting to see some kind of reasonable representation of our populace among our elected officials. We're shielding the flame against the high winds in this blizzard of shame, we're standing up and saying No more, not me, this is not enough. We're getting hungry and growing ill content to squabble over scraps — and all the while whole cities are going without water. 

Trickle down compassion only works when there's compassion to trickle down and, quite honestly, I don't know how anyone can be expected to cultivate compassion in a world that barely wants to participate anymore. We're in the age where no one should be feeling left out, where everyone gets a trophy just for playing in sports games, but adulthood and civil service seem like slogging careers with no real point but to line pockets, spin shit, eat silk, and die.  It's a fight over the color of a dress that's been blown to biblical proportions and applied like the broad stroke beginnings of a Bob Ross painting — only nobody's trying to fill in the shape with any kind of blending. Every line is a boundary drawn in the sand and nobody cares enough to let the water wash them all away. It would be an ironic thing, considering that if we keep on the way we are, we're all going to be underwater soon anyway, but the comedy ends when you understand that in the sea, we're not top of the food chain anymore.

I say start handing out participation trophies to politicians — an idea I can't even take credit for, as it came streaking into my brain, riding on a lightning bolt like Slim Pickens riding the bomb in Kubrik's Dr. Strangelove — but only if they're actually participating. That's not to say pushing some team sport agenda, where ideas are color coded and burned at once if they don't match up with the side you want to support, but actually making a point to serve as a representative of the constituents who elected you. To those constituents then, I say, quit thinking it's all only about you. If it's a dog eat dog world, which is what your actions really seem to say, you've got no hope against those same roving packs of coyotes. Be civil so that politics, like police work, can return to being a civil service. Remember that it's it's a role taken on not unlike the firefighters and firefighters who don't do their job? Well. That's how everything burns when you're the one who neglected something and got it all caught on fire — and it seems to me that's just what we're doing right now.

I'm not saying it's all bad eggs and reptiles, the same as I'm not saying every badge and a gun lets it go straight to their head. I'm not saying no one's trying, I'm not saying that anyone is worse than any other, but let's be real for a minute and consider what happens to a bird who lets an argument break out between its wings. Let's look at what happens when our colloquial "boys in blue" bust down doors out of misplaced initiative and shoot unarmed civilians in their own homes. Let's look at when responsibility to the public overlooked and every call to go on the hunt for the boogeyman mobilizes the mobs. All it does is fan the flames, encourage Nazis to return to the streets, and little boys to take Supreme Court seats never mind get a seat on Air Force One. Let's look at what happens when the news works the angle of agendas rather than reporting actual news — whatever that even means anymore, I'm not sure anyone knows. Let's look at what happens when we're lynching effigies and then crying when people don't love who we think they should. Let's look at the way we, again, try and slander people for dancing or selling their bodies like any of us are any kind of moral authority.

This is what non-participation looks like. This is what happens when you're not contributing, or hell, even listening. This is what happens when you live in an echo chamber, where your right way is the only right way for everyone and you'll gun down any perceived threat to the contrary.  This is what happens when you can't live and let live, where every hill is the one you've chosen to die on, and you're pitching a fit about the way you're using your lives. This is what happens when civility has died and decency is the most uncommon commodity. This is what happens in a world where you're the only one who can ever be right for everyone, where lies that justify your bias mean more than truth, where the American way has become nothing more than consume, shit, shoot first, and die in a pile of money.

I don't know about you, but this isn't the America was taught to believe we were meant to be when I cracked open a history book at an impressionable young age. Absolutely there are arguments to be made for the fact that the road to Manifest Destiny is paved with corpses and held together with more blood than mortar. Absolutely, you can say that homo sapiens have been hardwired to murder and exterminate everything around them from their first days upright. Absolutely you can say that their side, is the bad side, that the Pandits — the wise of the world — have no real interest in it anymore. Absolutely you can say why should I bother, because nobody's going to bother for me...and that's why nobody deserves the trophy.

It's not you vs. the world. It never has been and, still, that's exactly what we've made it. The race we've turned life into has only one ending for all of us and no one here escapes that. No one. Not even Jesus cheated Death and, no matter your concept of what comes after or whose immortal soul needs saving, the notion that your only hope of going forward is to dig in your heels and antagonize everyone into agreeing with you? Well, that just fucks everyone and makes even well meaning pacifists want to take up sticks and start clubbing the villains. It robs the world of compassion and consideration. It closes the doors on churches during hurricanes. It locks up the hearts and minds and the whole damn population and gives us no hope of winning — not even all the stupid things we've chosen to wage war on.

 I suggest we step up and start living this notion that no one, actually no one, gets left behind. I suggest we be more than our petty bickering about who's right and wrong for you and me, but instead just let people do right for themselves. I suggest we leave behind color coded arguments and opt for politicians with monochromia. I say we stop wielding the world like it's a hammer and everything is a nail. I suggest we stop trying to be right for anyone but ourselves. I suggest we start being worthy of the same participation trophies we're teaching children to expect and stop handing out them out only to the team players on elementary school fields. I suggest you remember we're all on the same team. I suggest we stop seeing everyone and everything as your enemy and just start letting people live. I suggest you stop running people down for fifteen dollar manicures. I suggest, really and truly, it's high time we all get better and start trying to get along or we're all going to go nowhere.

The shit's getting high and nobody's got gills designed to filter feces. Please, let civility and decency come back. Please, step down out of your rage, even if the world's feeding you plenty of reasons to be angry. I'll step up and give you your trophy, but only if you're contributing to the tomorrow where we're not all jeering hunchbacks in the shadows. If you can't, or won't do that? Well, then I implore you to do the one decent thing people like you and I can do: Sit in the back and shut the fuck up.  

Which is exactly what I'm about to go do.

Yours truly, from under grey skies,

This Writer who thinks America's a whole lot less than it could be.

An Open Letter to My Fellow Americans:

Dear My Fellow Americans,

It's somewhere just after dawn. I couldn't tell you exactly when because I have no use for clocks at this hour and it's largely irrelevant anyway. This letter has been three years in the works and has taken on at least six different drafts. Each one barely makes it past the declaration that it is, in fact, written for all of us. There are reasons for this aplenty mind you — and not least of which is that counting myself among you is a bile inducing thought. However, as our monuments and parks sit in a state of rot, if not entirely cared for out of passion for preservation and the outside world, I feel I am out of time. So, here I am, just after dawn, swallowing down the sick feeling to put words down on a page. It's the only recourse left, the only hope for a shark who finds too much trash in the waves, and I must write or I will drown in this tsunami of garbage that has become the America I once knew.

I used to ask myself where we went wrong. Was it the mongrel dogs in Washington, the crooked, cut rate, dime store, bullshit artists whose only real talent is whipping the masses into a frenzy in ways that would make a pasty chef blush? Was it the way that we've really run with the age old adage that There's no such thing as bad press? Is it the, tail chasing, maelstrom of madness that is materialism and the idea that the metric of success is having a bigger T.V than the neighbors you can only see when peeking through bent Venetian blinds? Is it because we've lost sight of the forest and can only see the trees? Is it because we've become upright beasts and treat the social hierarchy like it's some representational food chain? Is it because we've started living in echo chambers, rejecting things we don't like in the blind pursuit of confirmation bias until we're akin to something like the main character in Altered States?

If not for the few high spots I've been able to find while surfing this wave of syringes and feces, these are the kind of thoughts that would keep me up at night. If not for good (according to me), Kentucky, bourbon, strong coffee, and the ripping back of the curtain on digestible drugs, I might not have never noticed these things — and for that I used to wonder if my life might have been better. The ignorant sure smile more, at least when they're not too busy looking like red-faced Howler Monkeys. I learned, perhaps too quickly however, that this, like a life designed to be lived in these Godless hours of threadbare functionality, was not for me.

Better to live with eyes open, even if what you're seeing sometimes feels like a waking nightmare, a fever dream fueled by too much cactus and tequila.

Perhaps that's a bit of where this edge comes from, as it is a thing I have very recently gone over. Reciting correspondence to the vestiges of hope I see, few as they are, has littered the landscape of my thoughts with words that have a fierce demand to make their way out. They, like the democracy we cling to through our perverted lens, are at the core of what keeps me going as grey skies struggle to find some kind of color. Perhaps it is loud music, the fuel in the tank and the driving thrum in my ears that keeps my feet moving. Perhaps it's the fact that I didn't spike either of the three cups of coffee I've had and made this mistake of watching what passes for news this morning. Perhaps it's because I'm stuck in a house that's too big, in a place where prohibition runs rampant and the laws concerning alcohol echo the fact that not even the streets here can come before God...

The truth is, my fellow dogs, it's because even the fleas are starting to jump ship to avoid all the mange.

Calling what we have now any kind of Democracy is akin to saying we have any kind of sexual education that isn't mired in some Puritanical fear of what we get up to after dark. Calling what passes for Love of Country is not too different than the Sunday, Church skipping, Christians who call for the murder and shame of people who just want to live their lives. Calling what we have as a collective 'common sense' is the same kind of misnomer as suggesting Michigan has clean water — and it's no wonder that place is leading the way toward the Fury Road future as a result. The problem is that we say all these things like they're somehow true just because we say them and, heartbreaking as it is to pen these words or transcribe them onto this blog that stands as a testament to my good fortune, I just can't live inside that bubble anymore.

We're a nation run by upright swine and jackals, con men and swindlers who think that civil service is a cause worthy of jockeying. We're a collective of people who think the world is a giant versus sport, that the size of a car and how many you have is some measure of success and God help anyone who has more who paints a target on themselves by having more than you. Discomfort, whether rooted in envy or not, has become grounds for Murder. Unease has become the plague of the unquiet mind, where the man who lives better must be bludgeoned because he highlights all the things that we do not have. It's akin to the insanity of murdering a Michelin star chef because the only things you've ever bothered to learn to cook come from a microwave — and nobody even stops to think this is anything short of normal.

So where did we go wrong? I'd like to think there's a root or a cause because that means that there's some kind of cure. I'd like to think we can carve it out like cancer and flush it with enough poison. Believe me, I've tried. It doesn't work. The problem isn't a physical root, it's not something we can simply deforest with a legion of saws.

Don't get me wrong, my fellow famished, there's a lot of good in the world still out there. There's truth. There's justice. There's passion. I've seen these things. I've touched them. I carry them with me. I've sat down with them around the fire and kept warm with the company of conversation. I've found them at the bottom of coffee cups, even at this hour. I've espoused their virtues from the tops of tall mountains, I've brought people with me to the top and let them go so they could fly. I've seen the beauty in the mud, the wind, and the rain. I've heard symphonies comprised of gunfire and high grade pyrotechnics that would soil the sheets of even the most devout of arsonists. I have seen and known the joy that can only come with knowing you're sharing a twilight sky with all the promise that could ever be. I've known good music, good people, and feasted on amazing meals...

And when I look around now, I'm just as hungry for more as the rest of you.

I want to know the great mysteries. I want to see the future on the other side of the horizon. I want us to go to the stars we know and be more than the petty measurements we all use to gauge success. I want these things the same as I write these words. I chase them down with the same abandon because my bones no other form of motion. It's what's right for me and, despite it being a pursuit most destined to end in feeling rich in spite of poverty, that's the entire point of my life. It's the root of my pleasure, the fuel for my passion, and the roads by which I have found myself stumbling into the what was once thought to be the most impossible of treasures. It's what works for me, the same as, I'd hope, you've found a life that works for you.

It's imperative however that that's as far as it goes, right there. It's for you. That's it. You don't get to make those decisions for anyone else. Freedom, at least according to the founding articles of the American Way, is supposed to be inalienable and truth held self-evident. That means you can't impose your will upon another and call it right, because then that person isn't free. You can't steal what is not yours, however envious you might be of the things you want. You're not entitled to anything just because you're here, breathing and taking up space. Whatever you want out of life, you've got to barter for it with the currency you've cultivated — and I strongly advocate a sense of reflection if money is the only measurement you've learned to use there.

So then it seems to me the fault is more simple than I would like: The problem is us. The problem is that Representational Democracy is all too real. I don't have — nor necessarily think there should be — an alternative. So what then should we do when our national monuments are littered in our own trash? What do we do when the highest court in the land has seen the appointment of soulless, greedy, screw-jacks who couldn't be trusted with a single person, never mind a decision that would impact more of then than we could ever hope to know in a lifetime? What then, do we do, when half the voting public sees no point and the franchise of America is cluttered with the disenfranchised? How do we go forward when even the Captain hates the fucking boat and just wants to slap down the Hammer and Sickle sponsorship stickers on the bow?

Fuck me. I'd never say I know, but I can tell you what I think: We've got to be better than we've found ourselves.

Your life isn't about the size of the T.V. or how many cars you own. It's not about if you buy a home, have a kid, or leave any kind of legacy. These are the fruits that ripen too quickly and rot before the harvest. These goals are cheap. They're easy and they undercut the value of even the most blustery New England sunrise (limited as even I'll admit I find it). Life's about what you do and what you leave behind when you're gone. If all that remains of you is a house full of shit or a snapshot in a history book? You've got no control over what people are going to do with that. None. No more than I do with these words — and believe me I intimately understand the woes that come with that kind of thinking.

Maybe I've got it all wrong. Certainly I wouldn't advocate what I call living for most of the world at large. It has almost killed me more than once and, again, it certainly drives me down a road of poverty and lunacy. That's just it though, it's mine. I'd rather see the iconic moths flying from the mouth of my wallet than have the words of a stranger come spilling from my lips. I'd rather know good food I made and share it than I would buy it to keep it for myself. I like smoking cigarettes and drinking at socially unacceptable hours of the day. I am ill suited to the nine-to-five rat-race — if only because I have no interest in keeping up with the rest of you. I don't even like you. In fact, I find most of you insane if not downright contemptible in your conduct and lacking self knowledge...but there's a catch to those words.

I don't have to agree with you.

I have to stay in my lane. I have to barrel down on the gas pedal. I have to write words to keep myself swimming because that's what sharks do. I have to prepare feasts of plenty and serve them on the fine china of my heart. I have to make my choices for me because I have to live up to my own standards, because I have to respect myself in these cold and bitter mornings, because if I didn't I wouldn't be me and if I wasn't me then who the fuck is living my life? My self is not a commodity and neither is yours. It's not for anyone else to buy and it's not for you to try and sell. It's not for you to say is right and, so long as you're not imposing and demanding your way be the way for anyone else, it's not for anyone else to say is wrong either.

Life is not a spectator sport. It's not an arena where everything has to be a fight or a trench populated only by the men, women, and others who agree with you. It's not a war that must be waged on holidays or your fragile sense of security. It's not an assault on your existence because people don't behave in a manner in which you agree with even if you're worried for the state of their immortal souls. Someone's faith and ideas aren't wrong because they're not the same as yours, the same as I'm not right just because I write these words down. Again, my life has almost killed me. It stalks me through the shadows, it has sent me to bed cold, tired, and hungry, and I accept these choices. Even when I believed I would die alone save the company of a much more literal — and thus more tolerable — breed of dog, I accepted this without hesitation. I had no choice because, again, this life is mine and I had to be me.

It's no different for you or anyone else. Maybe you're the kind of person who likes to get up, cinch up your Windsor knot over the ivory buttons after lacing up your Oxfords, and go to work negotiating land deals on behalf of people who barely speak your language. Maybe you're the kind of soul who struggles through the dawn to put passion into the food you want to feed the world. Maybe you spend your Sunday's in service to your — and I do mean your — God. Maybe you do think the measure of success is how many placeholders you put in front of the decimal point in your bank account. I can worry about you for any one of these things. I can be concerned about the quality of life you're living. I can think you're absolutely insane to go about it the way you do...

But what I can't do is tell you how to live and you can't do that to anyone either. It's repugnant to have to add the caveat that this thinking isn't really relevant to the rapists, pederasts, and other such rabid beasts, who think they've the right to forcibly alter the course of someone's will — but these are the times we live in. Nobody gets a blank check on to bounce on bullshit anymore. Racism never was funny. Mockery of the lives lost won't carry you far at all, if only because you're missing the point of the tragedy and in so doing, you're betraying the same sense of America you claim so proudly under you ball-caps while chomping down on hot dogs and root-root-rooting for your home team thinkers. We're all the same snowflakes, special until we melt because we let ourselves get so hot under the collar at the things we don't agree with in the world.

Again, don't get me wrong. I get it. There's so many people — and I use the word generously here — in the world that go about in ways I vehemently disagree with, but I'll give you room to go about your life, to let you "do you". I'll keep my scathing words lashed firmly behind my teeth unless you invite them in by loosing yours on the world as if you've any kind of real authority over the lives of anyone else. I want you to be happy. I want you to have what you want, but the world is not the oyster for you to shuck and the fishermen who finds the pearl is not yours to murder just because you want it for yourself or don't think he should have it when you're struggling so. I cannot, in good conscience, tell you what is right unless you ask. I cannot, in good standing of the self, advocate the life I've lived unless you knock on the door and ask for that kind of guidance. I cannot, no matter how right I think I am in the way I live — and I very much do — impose that kind of life on you.

Buying into the idea that you're right for anyone other than you? That's chasing your tail trying to make your way. That's perverting your memory, which is the only lasting form of legacy. It doesn't matter how many marks you make in concrete or how much soil you turn up to make way for your own expansion. It's not Dog Eat Dog, it's Caveat Emptor. It's buyer beware, especially of your own shit sandwich. It's making sure you're satisfied with what you see reflected back in the mirror and understanding it's in that glass you'll find the only things you've got any right to have a say in at all.

Again, I'm not saying you can't go mad, get frothing, or get frustrated at the direction the dirt ball seems to be spinning. I'd never do that just like I don't think you can. Feel what you feel, but remember that feelings aren't a license to act. You can absolutely think you're better than others but you don't have any right at all to act on it. You can't tell someone they're wrong for wanting to be something different than what they were yesterday and you can't force someone to love you. Blood comes only from stones that are thrown, and it takes a special kind of asshole to stone someone to death over a matter of disagreeing with how they live when that's not hurting anything but your self righteous sense of how it ought to be going.

So where did we go wrong? As I see it, we all went wrong when we started to think we were the only ones who had it right and then came up with the idea that we had to save the rest of the world by beating them to death until they agreed with us. I think we went wrong when we began to feverishly guard our self-imposed discomforts with stones and spears, when we weaponized ourselves against threats we perceived rather than harmonized against the plights we all know. I think we went wrong when we started thinking we could force anyone who didn't agree with us to get in line just because we didn't like being disagreed with. I think we went wrong thinking we were some moral authority. I think we went wrong thinking there's any right way for anyone but ourselves or that anyone had to come along for our ride who didn't want to be there.

I think we went wrong, trying desperately to be right for everyone. We went wrong trying to think there was a right road for the mass and that we should be forcing everyone else to into our lane instead of just staying in it ourselves. We went wrong trying to impose our way on others instead of giving everyone those inalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence in which the very title of said document says all it needs to:

Independence - adj: free from outside control; not depending on another's authority.

 I won't pretend to know what's right for you. I won't ever claim that my truth is yours — especially not when it's so abundantly clear it isn't — but I'll do all any of us can ever really do when we want someone along on the ride of life: I'll ask.

I'll ask you to support and praise those who have gone to places you would like to be rather than strike them in the kneecaps so you can get ahead.  
I'll ask you to believe you're more than the things you own and to start owning yourself instead.
I'll ask you to share your passion with the world, and let others take whatever roads they may.
I'll ask you to stop being right for everyone and instead just try and do right for yourself.
I'll ask you not to try to save the world by way of billy clubs and bullets, but instead by letting people flourish and live lives unfettered by people who think they know better.
I'll ask you to remember that, in taking away the freedoms of another, you're squandering the principles this country was founded upon.
I'll ask you to stop being tyrants, to treat your rabies, and to keep your disagreements behind your teeth unless you see someone trying to take away anyone's freedom.

I'll ask for a bit of sunshine to make its way out from under grey skies. I'll ask for the patience to see the weeks dwindle to days with a smile on my face. I'll ask for a better tomorrow for all of you, because that's what we all deserve, and then I'll work to try and carve that out for me while still leaving room for you  — and I'll stop right there because it's all I can do.

With a humble heart, roaring fire, and wrung hat firmly in hand,
The Writer, an American, trying to make his way through the heartland of the Universe, just like you.

The Importance of Letting a Chapter End

The Importance of Letting a Chapter End:
And why it's so important to keep at least one hand on the wheel.

Here we are again. It's a new year, a time for half-ass resolutions and full measures left squandered in the wake of shame, hangovers, and refuse of promises not intending to be kept. Here we are again, when the skies go grey and stay that way, when the world opens up to something cold and drives good, well meaning, people to a fever pitch of inertia. Here we are again, listening to ourselves tell lies about what we intend to do in the upcoming year, about the changes we're going to make, about the road we're all on, and how it's this year we're finally going to have good things come our way.

 

Well, I hate to break it to you dear Reader, but that's just not the way it works. 

New years aren't new chapters, at least not inherently. Surely they can be, in the same way the blue-thirty dawns can be chalked full of promise and potential, but that's not something that just happens. Chapters end and changes come in exactly the same way: We make choices to pen no more words in the direction things are going. The tone is finished, this piece of what we've been working on has found reason to take a turn to what's next in the story, and now it's time to move on to the ever present 'What's Next'. The catch is, in this moment of realization where the literal (and less so) sun rises over the day of your life, you've got to be the one to put down the period, turn the page, and put the pen back to work.

It's here, in this moment, I encourage a liberal use of punctuation. Apply a question mark to the word 'Next'. Put a period at the end of things that are finished. Let yourself flip the page, let yourself make the changes — this is an absolutely essential piece of "The Good Life" — but be realistic about what those things are. Don't tell yourself a falsehood about your motivations, I don't care if it's only that you're actually going to the gym or if you're going to be kinder to yourself; pick your battles, plot your path, and climb that goddamned mountain. I promise you, the views from the top are worth it — but, in whatever you do, you've got to be honest with yourself or you're just spinning your wheels to go nowhere.

It's okay to find yourself in places you'd rather not be. We've all been there, stumbling down dark alleys, drunk on sinister thoughts that push the jeering villains of our mind firmly into the forefront of our eyes. We've all seen the circling vultures and heard snarling dogs of reality, lurking just out of sight and waiting to pounce on us the minute we set out on the paths unknown. It's what makes well worn, well lit, streets so comforting in foreign cities. It's what makes your ears bend backwards to the footfalls of strangers coming up behind you. It's a survival instinct in some ways — but is survival enough to be called living? Is it enough to simply stick to the paths we know, especially if they're not taking us to the places we want to go?

I caution against this, against letting your back stay turned toward the things that frighten you. I caution against sticking only to what you know, especially when all it's doing is underlining the things in your life you really don't want. I caution against self perpetuation of the undesirable. I caution against only going forward down the paths you know, the roads you can navigate by feel, and I advocate strongly against taking things off road when you find yourself veering through the S-Curves of your own bullshit. That's about as sensible as blaming the whole world for the fact that the same things keep happening to you, that the new year is the same as the old, and thinking that the Universe "just isn't fair."

Once again, my dear Reader, that's just not the way it works.

Life is fair.The Universe is fair. Terrible things happen by happenstance the same as they do by the choice of action — and it's paramount to remember that not choosing is a choice and that, as was Said by Dr. Thompson: "A man who procrastinates in his own choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance."

Life will go on with or without you. Time will pass, so will people and moments if you let them, and so too will you if you're not carefully keeping an eye on yourself. It's why the importance of self-honesty is so important. It's why keeping your eyes on the road is an essential piece of life advice. It's what you've got to do if you're really going to turn any pages in the story of your life at all. It's why it does you no good to promise yourself that you're going to do things you don't do. It's why you can't expect to get anywhere if all you do is blame life for what happens to you. It's why you've got to be honest with your words, why you should only shake hands if you intend to honor the deal, and why you shouldn't pay so much attention to the way clocks tick — leave that in the background and let it be a happy surprise when you find fifteen hours have passed in a state of blissful merriment.

Life, it's been said, is a highway and you really, really, really, need to keep one hand on the wheel — because not everyone else will. Some people are content, or so they say, to let themselves coast through existence and life like it's just something that happens to them. These are the Mad Max parallels, crazy fast and blinding frenzies of gasoline and flaming engines all too familiar to people who live in Orlando or Detroit. It's the lunatics who populate these roads, the ones who don't understand how the obstacles just jump right out in front of them and leave them a flaming wreck of tears, that deserve the widest berth. This kind of weird is for the ones who can't take it to a professional level and never even had a potential career as a bootlegger in the days of history.

Driving like this just makes you a statistic and, in life, there's little more depressing than just being a number for a bean counter somewhere behind and insurance desk. They don't think about your story, they don't care, and they don't have to anyway. All that, my friends, is up to you.

You're the one who has to let a chapter end, who has to make and allow for change. You're the architect of your own life. You choose where there are walls, windows, and doors. You're the cartographer of your journey. You choose the path, you plot and blaze the trail, and it's up to you to me mindful of the elevation — or lack thereof — you find yourself at. You're the driving force of your own Universe. You're your own sun, wind, and rain. You're your warm days as well as your dark ones and you deserve to be more than the sum total of your own indecision.

So be honest with what you see out there on the road. Pay attention the things you hear. Be mindful of the map you draw and the path your blazing. Pay attention the hardships, see the forest and not just the trees. Enjoy the laughing comfort of a loved one resting on the pillow beside you. Embrace the hard words delivered on the heels of festive holidays. Be more than your mistakes. Be more than your success. Live a life that is full of pride and let others be there to come along if they want — and don't be afraid to leave them behind if they don't. You don't owe anyone, except yourself, anything but you've got to remember that you'll be seen for your offering.

If all that you offer is empty, hollow, words, then how can you expect to find anything more than an empty, hollow, life? If you lie to yourself, if you lie about the momentum you've not got, if you tell yourself the comforts that it just isn't your fault all the time, where do you really expect to go? You're taking your hands off the wheel, you're letting the chapters wind on like cut-rate, dime store, pulp novels destined to die in obscurity. Worse still, the paths will be unknown to you and the best you'll ever manage to be in your own story is a footnote to your own existence — and of all the tragedies in life one can endure, the worst is to be a bystander in all their own days.

So, once again, I encourage you to pay attention. Pay attention to the road and the ride, be mindful of the direction you're letting the whole thing go in, even if it's by not choosing a direction. Be mindful of your passengers and what the people doing in the backseat say about you to the passerby who has nothing to go on by how things look from the outside. Be mindful of the heartfelt tears that you're offered and the pleas for change that come with them. Don't neglect these moments — and certainly not if all you're going to do is play Orphan Oliver and keep asking for more. Be mindful of your feelings and be honest with them, even if you've got to substitute words of thanks that are sometimes forced to be stand-ins until you've got a chance to say the bigger things straight to someone's eye. 

Be mindful of driver-less cars and the frothing dogs behind the wheel of automobiles that are more Bondo and duct tape than steel. Be mindful of the pages you're turning and the direction you're taking your story. Be mindful of lingering too long in Chapters that aren't going anywhere but dragging out the parts of the story. Be mindful of your own bullshit and never opt to eat a whole sandwich's worth of it. Be mindful of who you and how you present that person. Be mindful of where you put the doors in your walls and who you open them for. Be mindful of what you want out of life and what you're doing to get yourself there. Simply put: Be aware and don't be a dick — and apply both of these things in broad strokes when it comes to how you treat yourself.

Remember that, sometimes, to get where you want to be you've got to be willing to let go of things. Own your life instead of your things. Share it with the people who matter most to you and count yourself among the guests at that table. Keep watch on storm clouds in the eyes and, if the rain falls, don't offer a lace umbrella. Don't bullshit with self inflicted platitudes. Don't beg for things you're not willing to appreciate, and let chapters close when the words are done. Slow down and help those who've gotten into an accident, but give no quarter to those who won't account for their own lack of attention. Appreciate the courage it takes to stick out your thumb and ask for a ride. Compliment the roar of a stranger's engine and look into the heart of their words. Find parallel penmanship and blaze wild words weirdly on into the night.

Remember to keep at least one hand on the wheel and the pen. Remember to turn the page. Remember to ring the bell and trim the bonsai when it's time to be done. Remember you don't have to stay somewhere you don't want to be, but you've got to be responsible for the momentum that'll carry you away. Don't get swept away in the waves of the world, steer your ship toward shores you want to call home. Be mindful of who you wound with your accidents and how you hurt yourself by letting choices stand because you're neck deep in your own inertia. Be mindful of how many pages you're filling with words you wouldn't choose and how often you're being taken down roads you'd rather not go down. Be mindful of yourself, from action to sedation, truth to lies, loves, losses, limbs you allow to choke out your trunk.

Remember, you can always close a book and start writing a new one. Remember, you can get off and onto a different road. Remember you can change passengers at any time. Remember to be more than a bystander, that there's more to life than winning the rat-race, and that rodents have few principles beyond survival. Remember the love and loyalty paid to you and pay yourself back to it. Remember who inspires you and be honest with that, the same as you are with what you do with that motivation. Be mindful of who you blame if you're not willing to blame yourself. 

Remember, this life is your and you've got to act according to yourself. You've got to steer the wheel toward places you want to be. You've got to close covers sometimes. You've got to open doors. You've got to look through windows. You, and only you, can make anything happen. Don't expect handouts, but give appreciate when kept from starving in the dark. Remember that people, especially yourself, should not be a placeholder in your existence. Remember to be more than a footnote or a scrawl in the margin. 

Remember to appreciate the view from the top and that, to get there, sometimes you've got to leave things behind — and that it's always better to leave your own bullshit at that bottom of that same goddamn mountain.

Good luck to you, my Readers. May this year be all you want it to be — and may you all gain the wisdom enough to figure out what that is so you can get there.