The 2011 Year's End

It’s time to put another year behind me. I thought about using these last couple days of it to process paperwork and tidy up spaces, but then I thought to hell with it. I’m pretty useless for doing too much of anything physical right now anyway, as I’m stricken with a screwed-up back for this last bit of the year. Instead of sitting around and having my senses accosted with a stupid series of mono-show marathons playing on TV at this time of the year on all channels, I chose to do something a little more cerebral and reflective instead.

My overall state of sentiment for the year of 2011 is a blend of gratitude and sorrow respectively about both successes and failures that are either new or continuing. The simplest way I can think of to describe this year overall is to view things within a matrix of good versus bad, and gain versus loss. Here then is the outlined breakdown of the year using those criteria:

Good Gains

·         Health-wise, I have more muscle tone, stamina, stronger heart and lungs, and regained at least six years worth of physical health

·         Achieving greater than half-marathon endurance during the fall

·         Beautiful weather throughout the summer, fall, and early winter for me to be outside more

·         Being able to run outside shirtless in summer without giving anyone some compulsion to call the cops. The bonus was a nice tan.

·         Better able to express myself in writing

·         Wii system: it’s allowing me to actually express my anger in a more harmless and cathartic manner

·         World-wide protests: against capitalism gone out of control on Wall Street, and by the pro-democracy public, especially in North Africa/the  Middle East (Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Syria), to rise up against their own iron-fisted despots

·         Finding the will to enter the dating scene again

Good Losses

·         Excess weight and inches of waistline

·         The deaths of Osama bin Laden, Mohamar Qaddafi, and Kim Jong Il. Hopefully this world can become a little better place now that we’re rid of a few less fanatical, antagonistic, tyrannical shit-disturbers

Bad Losses

·         Deaths of Steve Jobs, Jack Layton, essayist Christopher Hitchens, and my Grandmother

·         Most of the NDP and Green Party candidates from the last provincial election; thus a less balanced voice in the provincial legislature

·         Earthquake in Japan, The Slave Lake fires, floods in the Philippines, any other natural disasters that occurred on a massive scale that I failed to list

·         My chance to go on a trip to Costa Rica (or anywhere else for that matter)

·         Failure to negotiate a more substantial wage increase for my co-workers and peers

·         Investments are performing in a most shitty manner

Bad Gains

·         Debt

·         Grey hair now migrating to eyebrows

·         Extra pounds since mid-November

·         Back pain for this last week of the year

·         More mass mob stupidity on the globe, I especially refer to this year’s riots in Vancouver and London

Continual Bad

·          Realizing this year, more than ever, just how badly my work schedule deprives me of quality social, personal, and self-development time

·         Overall more loneliness (few people around or available when I have free time to share, or during the few times that I need help with something)

·         I’m still treated as just a “friend”, or “like a brother” to most women I date (it’s not a friggin’ compliment!). The testosterone I have left in me makes me want to puke every time I hear or see some reaction akin to that.

Continual Good

·         My ever-strengthening bond with my one best friend

·         Continuing my commitment to life-long learning

·         Urge to remain health conscious

·         Feeling more centred spiritually

After all this reflecting, I’ve given thought about the things I’ll need to take better steps ahead for the next year coming that’s only a few hours away. I’m happy to say that I have most of them around me now; it’s just a matter of getting organized, and enhancing and using things differently. Rather than processing stuff in the same old manner, with the same old bad habits, it would probably be a better thing to deploy a scorched earth policy on some areas of my life, and start on fresh new ground.

Boxing Day

Christmas passed by fine enough. On top of what we already do as a family for the holiday, I also got re-acquainted with the gentlemanly pastime of playing darts along with my nephews; that plus dominoes. I knew I had some as a kid, but didn’t take interest in them then, and there was no one around who really knew how to play them. I encountered them again as an adult while in South America, where they were a popular game amongst the young and old alike. They seemed to be a ubiquitous feature on the tables in the outdoor taverns and cafes during late afternoon as friends and patrons played and chatted, and unwound with some beer or pop in the heat of the day. They are a reminder of the pleasantness of what the true essence of what a game, as I feel, is supposed to be: something essentially simple yet challenging; yet fun and social. I find chess to be OK, but chess is more complicated, seems to only attract introverts, and it only seems to make introverted people withdraw even more into themselves as they sit there calculating strategies. I can’t stand it when people make simple games or sports (which are just more glorified forms of time-wasting) less fun and more serious and intellectual than they need to be. I can’t be troubled into memorizing, and then being led to argue about, a few decades worth of sports statistics like it’s somehow going to change the world. It’s bad enough that I know the crazy amount of trivia that I do never mind adding sports plays to my synapses. If I were stranded on a desert island with ten other “professional” people, and if I were the one responsible to pick the five most useful and practical of them to aid in survival and then let the rest perish, if there was a sportscaster among them, he would be the most likely one to be chopped into fish bait first.
 

It’s the evening of Boxing Day and I’m supposed to be working my bloody night shift tonight. As always, I’m not at all up for the challenge. I didn’t go through anything as intensely insane and exhausting as Boxing Day shopping, but I did travel, did some laundry, picked through a shitload of unread email, replied to some, deleted others, tried to enhance my Mom’s computer’s performance (with much futility), plus attended to lots of other things that kept my from getting the sleep that I seem to desperately need.

There seems to be just too much free floating fuzzy thoughts in my mind right now to even allow me to sleep anyway, even if I didn’t have all this other stuff to do.  Writing to collect and examine them is like trying to snatch a single drifting dandelion seed out of the air: the focused effort to swiftly catch one only makes some wild turbulence that pushes it further away from your grasp. This is exactly the kind of bewilderment I have to learn to work past if I’m ever to get into the momentum of committing to the missions of the New Year. Sadly, it seems like the only remedy for it is to press myself into writing even more, no matter how nonsensical. Stab and swish long enough into the air and perhaps eventually something might get captured.

The New Year’s missions themselves haven’t got true forms or names yet, or at least any that I would be comfortable to admit publically yet. Words and qualities like: simple, efficient, balanced, creative, profitable, measurable, dynamic, portable, alternative, transferable, inexpensive all appeal and have value for me, but to square them up with a vision, or the time I’ll be given, and to make them congruent to the wildly varied skills, knowledge and interests I already have seems to be a huge undertaking.

Five Questions, Five Answers: Winter Solstice

1.       Q: Why is the winter solstice significant to you?

 A: The date with longest night of the year, at this latitude where the time between sunset and sunrise is close to 17 hours long, occurring just nine or ten days before year’s end seems it should warrant something very meaningful. In the depth of this profound darkness, it’s like I become instinctually attuned into trying to crawl out of it and think of the future more, and I look at this last week and a half as that prime time of planning for what I want to see coming ahead for myself in the New Year. This month, it seems that the extra darkness at this time of year has been really making me screwy. I have a lot of mixed split shifts falling on early morning/late evening throughout this week; add to that the fact that there has been hardly any snow around to reflect more light outside, and solstice falls right at the time when the lunar cycle waning into new moon phase, it seems like the past few nights have been freakishly darker and longer than I’ve ever experienced. Perhaps that will just make me feel more pressured and desperate to change things once 2012 rolls in. It’s getting to be evermore exhausting in battling the depressive torpor that comes along during this season that I think I could just easily collapse into. I’m all the more thankful that I have Christmas off this year.

2.       Q: Are you affecting any positive changes now?

 A:  I’m dating again. I’m not going to say too much, because I feel like I’ll jinx myself if I do. Let me just say that it’s definitely not happening like the last few times in the past. It actually feels like something a hell of a lot different than a miserable job interview or a trip to the dentist*. I’ve been actually having a good time, and I feel like I’m actually connecting with a wonderful like-minded person (first time in a long time). I’m just taking it all day by day, moment by moment, avoiding analyzing things too much; thus thereby doing us both a favour by avoiding putting any ridiculous and unrealistic expectations and speculations on the table. 

3.       Q: Were you getting really bitter and angry about rejection?

 A: More accurately, what I’ve gotten frustrated and angry about is not so much “rejection”; but about “failure of fair and sensible acceptance”. It probably stems from my days working through the Justice department at the sexual assault centre. That experience undoubtedly had a huge impact in regards to my manner of approaching women. There was a need back then for me to consciously suppress appearances of looking too threatening or “virile” while working in that environment. In my private life, I really wanted to avoid the smelly shit pile of drama and suffering that could be created if any overt romantic interest I had in someone became poorly communicated, or misunderstood**. I hence didn’t do anything publically or privately that could have been misconstrued as unwanted provocation, or flirting no matter how innocent, neutral, practical, or natural the circumstances were. One would think that helping victims out would be something noble or heroic to do, but once I mentioned my occupation in casual conversation to others, people often avoided me like the plague, finding some excuse to leave the room and my presence . . . especially women. Because the work demanded a high degree of confidentiality, I couldn’t talk about it for fear of inadvertently disclosing details, and I had nothing else to talk about outside the topic of work. I was trying to do this very challenging thing for others, working on their behalf for some ideal of justice and righteousness, and yet I was the one being treated like an outcast. I felt very lonely and alienated, and even did some stupid things to compensate for it***. Meanwhile, the asshole psycho predators that we were trying to get off the street, more often than not, had wives and girlfriends, who were still stupidly faithful and loyal to these men, even while these guys were abusing them along with others. When these bastards were caught, they were penned up with murderers and violent offenders, some of whom were getting love letters and marriage proposals in jail. Life seemed so unfair for me that way: these monsters were getting others to tolerate, accept, and even love them; at the same time, I was struggling just to have people acknowledge me. I think noting these ironies made me very disillusioned about even bothering to give much thought or effort into pursuing some kind of relationship. I’ve witnessed and could cite more examples of this kind of dynamic involving people I know in recent history, but mentioning them here and now would be pointless, upsetting to them, and exhausting; it would only spur on more revulsion than I already have about this detestable facet of the human condition. I suppose that’s my way of feeling bitter and jaded about the topic.             

4.       Q: Any other big ideas in the coming New Year?

 A: I’m going to be taking more interest in re-inventing a new career path for myself, and continue my journey of life-long learning. Too complicated to explain for now; how I wish it were easier. I think I have consciously and purposely given myself harder challenges ahead in the spot I’m in, to help give me more incentive to escape the rut I think I’m in now.

5.       Q:  Last question . . . any maxims from this year that you could take into next year?

 A: Never underestimate the power of kaizen.

*- A trip to the dentist, or a bad job interview might actually have been better in a couple of cases.

**- After spending countless hours of researching, processing, and reviewing all sorts of scenarios of the legal ramifications and trouble one can face with even the slightest of actions being misinterpreted: bouncing around on a pogo stick through a minefield looked a hell of a lot safer than trying to ask someone out on a date.

***- Stupid things . . . like succumbing to the foolish notion that joining and going to a church was somehow going to help me solve my problems, or make me a better person.