Monthly Archives: December 2011

And Let’s Flush Another One Down the Crapper

Here’s my resolution for this year:  to tell more people to fuck off. 

Let’s see if I can do it, if I can actually stand up for myself once in a while.  That’s almost synonymous with being decisive so the odds are against me.

And there’s so much pressure on these holidays, on Christmas and New Year’s—these stupid days.  That’s all they are, if you’re not aware.  They’re days.  New Year’s Eve?  It’s a fucking day. 

They’re days like any other except for this self-destructive need to pack as much importance and meaning into them as possible and then cram some more just in case.  Its a turducken of festivus grief and aggravation, keep cramming until it explodes, then rub it in crap and serve it all up.  Christmas has to be the one day you prove your love for people by spending most of it in the car to bring presents you’re not excited to give because they’re not big enough or expensive enough or perfect enough to prove you’re the greatest person in whoever’s life. 

New Year’s is the day you prove you’re better then the life you’ve been living up until December 31st, whether you’re trying to escape the mounting disappointments of your life to that point or maybe just the last year.

Somehow it’s become some magical epicenter of your friggin daydreams and fantasies.  Now it isn’t just a celebration, it’s not another day off or three day weekend, or a reason to go out and get drunk or have a party.  Now it’s become this symbol for reinventing yourself.

A new year, a new you—right?

someone seems to have misunderstood the assignment

Why is it always a new year, a new you?  Why not a new month, a new you; a new week, a new day?  Why keep putting it off?  Your diet always starts next week, I always look to next month to submit my writing to magazines, we always set date after date to do what we want and then set a new one when weeks later we realize they’ve passed without notice. 

Why wait for a milestone?  Why wait for some significant day or date, for society to say, “This is when you should do it.”

So huddle together in that illusion of change and progress.  Don’t worry, it’ll be safer that way because when you fail you can say we all failed and have your justification for not taking a chance on improving your life.

We can ignore the opportunities for change, the everyday opportunity to live the way that’s best for you.  We can do it together and hide behind each other, discounting our failures because someone else has undoubtedly failed greater.

So why change now?  New Year’s is just around the corner—we’ll do it then. 

You’ll change everything then.  January 1st; that’s when you’re going to stop smoking and start a diet and stand up for yourself and save money and learn origami and start using that cookbook your mother bought and go to the gym three times a week and read more and drink less and by George! you’re going to get that promotion because darnit, you deserve it and this is that year.  This is your year.  Now everything’s going to change.  This year will be different.

And for about thirty seconds on New Year’s Eve you actually believe it, don’t you, you stupid bastard?

But New Year’s Day is the same as it always is and you never quiet recover from it, do you?

That’s all that New Year’s Day is now, a recovery.

You put so much pressure on yourself, not just about what the New Year would bring and how you could be a brand new you but what you’re going to do on New Year’s Eve.  You have to celebrate right, after all.  If you can’t ring in the New Year properly, then you can’t possibly start off the New Year right and then your whole year will be shit.  So you have to spend at least two weeks obsessing over what you’ll be doing on New Year’s Eve—but not just you!  You have to involve as many people as possible, get the biggest group together that you can to prove to the world you are popular and loved and important to everyone you’ve ever met.  They have to be involved in the planning of this New Year’s shindig as well, everyone has to be involved, everyone a voice, or else it would simply be too easily decided. 

This has to be complicated!  Are you going to stay in, are you going out?  Are you going to have a big dinner or a small dinner, and then meet up with these people or those people, or maybe these people will want to get together with those people too.

yeah, this bottle will get the night moving in the right direction

This has to involve dozens of emails and texts, even phone calls—yes! it is that serious, you will actually call people and speak with them directly—and at least one couple must be either ostracized from the group or become so fed up that they storm off and refuse to play anymore.  Of course, the group will decide with their collective brain, that the couple in question sucked anyways and the New Year will be better off without them.

There has to be a lot of planning as without planning there would be no stress.  Wing it?  Are you crazy?  You can’t wing it.  Besides, without stress you would never get to the party or bar or restaurant and immediately pound four drinks—just to take the edge off of course.

And that will probably be the last thing you remember.

New Year’s Day is going to start how it always starts, and if you really believe in this new year, new you crap then this same old same old New Year’s Day is going to fuck you hard over a chair, mostly likely while your face to face with a pile of your own sick.

You’re going to drink too much.  You’re going to hurt like hell for most of the day, and you’re not going to remember shit from ninety percent of your night.  At least until you start seeing some of the pictures of you and that homeless guy you tried to make friends with, so you could maybe start his new year off right as well; and don’t forget about your dozen or so other best-friends-for-thirty-seconds, you remember them all don’t you?  Oh, give it time, it’ll start coming back to you. 

Don’t you remember your champagne- and girlie shot-induced word vomit of your entire life complete with all your regrets and mistakes and promises to fix and repair and move on and better yourself, and to—you know what!—to make this year your year! 

The best part is how it comes back to you.  You’re going to see it both ways, like a No Fear Shakespeare book.  You’ll remember how it sounded the night before, and my god it was fucking poetry spilling from your lips, so beautiful, so sophisticated, humbled, hopeful; side-by-side with how you really sounded, which was gibberish punctuated with your champagne spilling down your face because you’d forgotten how to swallow. 

Oddly enough, that sounds like most nights you go out and get drunk, doesn’t it?  That’s strange since New Year’s is so special.  How could it be the same as all these other parties or nights at the bar?  Weird.

That makes it all the more depressing the next day.  You realize that nothing has changed; there was no magical metamorphosis into the new you when the clock struck midnight.  With all the build up and pressure for that night to mean something you fall harder and that hangover hurts more.

Now that hangover represents your inability to change your life because if you can’t do it when that ball drops, well, clearly you can’t do it at all.  With all you had to drink you’d think one of those shots was that magic potion to transform you into whoever you see yourself as or destined to be.

So each year let’s put more pressure on the idea that New Year’s will fix everything if only we could surround ourselves will more people, if only we could make more resolutions and promise more of ourselves, if only there was that kiss at midnight to seal the deal and start the transformation.  One of these times it’s bound to work, right?

Maybe next year…

So Happy New Year, and go fuck yourself.

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