Scenes From the Debauched Mind of a Ne'er-do-well

 

As the new year dawns, it’s time to be a complete and total cliché and take a look back at my own personal 2016. Forget what happened to the world and anything of the like. It’s all about me! Though a lot less arrogant than that sounded. I may be a lot of things, but that level of self obsessed isn’t one of them. Hey, I’m a bit surprised, too!

This isn’t going to be a countdown of specific changes that I’ve made in the past year. I already updated that set of goals a short time ago here. Of course, it didn’t get read much. I like to think it was because I made the ‘brilliant’ choice of posting it before work, meaning all of you folks who might have read it were busy at jobs and stuff. I like to think that. It keeps me from being a sad heap of old tears slowly drying into obscurity. Look, please just go read it now and save us all the awkwardness of me sobbing uncontrollably again. Nobody wants that. No, this is going to be something a bit bigger and a lot less specific. That’s my way of saying that I’m pretty much making this up as I’m typing, and not even I can look into the future, even one of my own creation. Don’t worry, I’m not going to forego editing. This is just going to be a bit of a zig-zagging rollercoaster ride when it comes to subject. Riffing off the cuff is fun and terrifying all at once.

I could very easily fall into the trap of looking at 2016 as entirely bad. There’s been immense upheaval and pain in my family. Too many people close around me don’t know what’s coming next anymore. I’ve spent a lot of time this year angrily screaming out into the void in the hopes that my voice would somehow quell the maelstrom. I’m always one of those people who wants to do something. And when I can’t do something to fix whatever’s gone wrong, I flail and lash about. I can’t heal the wounds of everyone around me. I can’t change my life, or that of anyone around me, simply by wishing it to be so. All that I can do is keep striding forward.  I’ll always do everything that I can for anyone around me, but I’m not a superman capable of bearing the problems of the world. And trying to take everything at once just leads to my feeling crushed underneath the mass of it all. Going it alone doesn’t work. It never did. But I’ll still bellow into the night when the need is there, because sometimes a primal scream is what you need to clear your head and chase the demons off for another night.

I’m no longer trying to control everything. More accurately, I’m no longer pretending that I’m even capable of doing so. No matter how much time I spent over-thinking and tried to ruminate on every single possible outcome until I lit my head on fire , it still didn’t make me some sage who could know what was coming. Nobody can do that. All of that time and energy is best spent elsewhere, so I’m increasingly using it in other aspects of my life. After all, I spent quite some time going in the opposite direction, and that didn’t get me anywhere. Changing it up was overdue, and changing it up is what I’m finally doing. It might have taken me too long to get to this point, but that’s okay. I still got here. That’s the important part. There is still far too much road for me to travel, and trying to do that if my focus is tethered to the rear view just leads to collisions. If it’s holding me back, tripping me up, or hindering me at all, it’s getting cut loose and left behind.

I also feel like for the first time this year I actually made some progress when it comes to opening up to people. I actually allowed myself to admit that I’m vulnerable and that I can be hurt. I guess that a part of me used to look at that as a weakness, when in reality it’s a strength. Falling back a bit and allowing people around you to bear some of the load requires being strong enough to admit that yeah, it is a bit too much. I need to keep doing that when those moments rise in the future, and I actually feel like I will because it’s also a matter of wanting to do so. A lot of people out there have helped pick me up and dust me off when I’ve needed it. And a lot of you have made me look at things differently, even if you didn’t realize it. I hope that if and when you need someone to have your back, I can do as well for you.

Opening up about vulnerabilities isn’t admitting to a weakness, it’s acknowledging that you aren’t an impregnable fortress which cannot be injured. I have a fear of rejection that’s far from uncommon. We aren’t wired to deal well with people turning away from us. I’m certainly not. Too often, I’ve used that fear as an excuse for cocooning myself into a warm blanket of what’s already comfortable. No need to put myself out there if I already have enough people to interact with, right? But I don’t. And hiding from a world of people out there isn’t doing me any favors. Instead, I found myself feeling alone too often and trying to compensate by seeing possibilities that weren’t even there. So I’m slowly extending myself back out into the greater world again. Of course that’s going to lead to hurt. It’s also going to lead to so many good things that it’s more than worth the bit of pain.  

Overall, I got a lot stronger in 2016. Did I get everything that I wanted? Of course not. Does anyone ever look back at a year and conclude that ‘Yep, that was a perfect annum. Time to rest on my laurels because I’ve peaked’? But I made a lot of progress when it comes to myself. I spent a lot more time in the past twelve months really being honest about myself, what I do, and where I’m going than I have ever done at any previous point in my life. I’ve embraced a lot of new things this year and a lot of new ways of doing whatever it was that I already had going on.

I ended up physically stronger than where I was at the start. This is the one part of me that I think I’ve always had realistic expectations for. I’ve never really had that desire to be an over-inflated roid monkey lookalike grimacing down from the cover of a muscle mag, because every part of that is utterly artificial and bullshit. But I can hammer through a 90+ minute intense fitness challenge and nail it. I can now pretty consistently rip off a set of 8 pull-ups, and that sure as Hell wasn’t something I was capable of twelve months ago. And that took work. It took time. It took dedication.

What I’ve gotten better at is taking pride in an accomplishment that’s small in the grand scheme of things (like busting out 8 pull-ups) and spreading it out over other aspects of what I do. Taking that ability to be happy with those little achievements in the physical realm and bringing it out across the rest of my life. I don’t talk about things like that because I’m feeling all big and bad and boasty, but because I worked hard and now I can do something that was beyond my capabilities a short time ago. I’ve sadly ignored those little accomplishments elsewhere. There is absolutely nothing wrong with taking pride in your own journey, regardless of what it is that you’ve actually reached or achieved or how damn long it took you to get there. Those little wins are the fuel that keeps your momentum rolling.

And those little accomplishments add up to big progress. I sleep better. I’m calmer. I’m honestly happier. I don’t stew on every little thing the way that I have before. I’m more energetic. I smile a lot easier, and it’s more genuine. I save my focus for big ticket issues instead of sweating every little permutation of every little insignificant thing. I more frequently focus on the good stuff. Am I always successful at that? No. And that’s fine. Admitting to failures is the first step to moving past them. Accepting that you won’t always be successful is the first step to finding solutions when you’re not. I don’t spend as much time fixating on things that are honestly beyond my control. Nor do I feign inability to alter things that are within my grasp, but which I might not want to face up to.

I used to shackle myself to mistakes and missteps. They were branded into me as permanent reminders that I’d fucked something up and not to do it again. I figured that would help keep me moving the right way, because I could always glance down at the scars and remember what happens when you stray off the path. Instead, it left me scared shitless to take chances. And a life without risk is a life without much of anything. A life without vulnerability is a life without affection. Admitting to weakness is a path to greater strength. I will admit that the last one sounds a little too much like a line from a bad samurai movie. I now probably have to face an ancient master in some sort of final showdown. Accountability is a wonderful thing. I used to avoid the truth of what I was doing to keep from accepting when I wasn’t doing right by myself. But I let accountability tilt over into self abuse. No more of that. Learn the lesson, toss the mistake, move on.

“How can you love if you don’t love yourself” is a lyric bit from a Social Distortion song that I’ve always liked, but now I actually try to live it, at least a little bit. It’s probably a lyric from a lot of other songs either, since it’s more of a general concept. But this isn’t the music post...that’s totally coming at some point! Really! It’ll be a fun post without uncomfortable self reflection and stuff...just beats and power chords and audio badassery. Yeah, foreshadowing! That doesn’t mean accepting everything about yourself, it just means accepting who you really are and striving to be a little bit better...not because you aren’t up to par, but because you can always reach for more. And part of that is seeing things as they are, not as I want them to be. Sometimes it ends in disappointment, but that’s something real. And I can’t get to where I need to be if I’m living in an illusion.

Shit, if the Cliff of a few years ago read something like this, he’d burst out laughing and more than likely brand whatever idiot wrote it as a sniveling little bitch. Of course, that’s because he was trying to hide a boatload of insecurities and weaknesses that he wasn’t ready to deal with yet. And that’s okay. He’ll get there. He’d better, otherwise I don’t know who I am. 2016 was the rebirth of me in a lot of ways. I don’t know where this road is going, but it’s mine. I guess that’s as good a place to end this as any other.