The beginning, but in the middle

I remember being a school aged child and thinking it was so silly that the new year was in the winter, during the middle of the school year. Nothing about the outside world was representative of a new beginning, if anything it seemed more like the first steps of a great ending. I think for many people every year since 2020 feels like an alternate version of 2020 with a subplot of a medical/viral pandemic but a major plot of chaos. Well I know I did at least, last year for me was like an echo down a hallway of all the challenges I went through previously. 2024 was an episodic year for me, like driving around in circles until you are absolutely at a loss for how you keep ending up in the same place. A terrible syndicated television series with a god awful “will they, won’t they” couple that everyone is paying too much attention to. The tension between my thoughts, my feelings and my actual reality was a sour palpable flavor, like a slightly too sour lemonade.

I’m beginning to feel like in life once you figure out what mistakes you are making then you have the Sisyphean task of figuring out what version of yourself made the mistake. By the time you have figured that out, you are already another version of yourself, how cruel. The biggest change I’ve tried to make personally in my life is changing my social habits or rather rediscovering what makes me want to leave my home. Prior to the pandemic, I was mostly a homebody and during and after even more so but not to the extent of being a shut in; I was still bartending which is one of the most social jobs one can have on the planet. But now it has been several years since my last bartending shift and with the end of that career my social desires have changed. While I still love bar culture, I don’t love the after effects of an entire night of imbibing and socializing, probably no one does. So I spent last year doing things I guess I only used to long for when I was still a child laying vertically across my bed in my room. Going to galleries and art shows, going to ball games and coffeeshops, these are the things I used to dream about when I thought of my life in the big city.

I remember telling a former roommate of mine that I believed that people who are chronically late are trapped in a cycle of premature decisions that perpetuate their lateness. The irony being that making decisions too early tends to make one too late for the inevitable outcome. I am not so certain that I believe that now, although I do currently believe that timing is far more important than growing up would have had me believe. The last couple of months have been a lesson that timing dictates what one can truly be capable of; if you try and do something too soon you will fail and we all know the old adage of too little, too late.
Happy New Year, I hope the timing is right for us all.