One Good Intention
2010 was shit. Not in any way I need to explain, just the weight of a whole year where nothing felt right. Not enough of anything that matters: not enough sex, not enough magic moments you’d actually tell someone about, not enough evidence that any of this is worth the energy it takes. The job had been destroying me for so long I couldn’t remember what not being angry felt like. My relationship had either broken or I’d just stopped noticing. Every night was the same as every other night.
So January comes around and you’re supposed to want something different. You want to be the person who loses the weight, quits smoking, eats like he respects his own body. You want to leave. You want to travel. You want to be angry less often. You want the constant low-level misery to just shut up for once. You write it all down because writing it down is supposed to make it real, supposed to make you believe you could actually be someone else starting tomorrow.
But I’ve lived long enough to know how this works. Pick five things and you’ll stick with maybe two for a few weeks before life happens and you’re back to the cigarettes, the shitty food, the job, everything exactly the same. Except now you also get to feel like garbage for failing again. Too many intentions just spreads the failure thinner but doesn’t make it go away. The only thing that ever seems to stick is picking one. One thing that matters. One thing that if it moved, might make everything else feel less impossible to live with.
So that’s what I did. Looked at the list until something was obviously it. Taped it to the wall above my bed so I’d see it first thing every morning. Whether that changes anything or not, I guess I’ll find out.