Reflections on a new year

So I’m in the eat­ing area of my in-laws’ kit­chen, sit­ting at the table before this dam­nable machine and think­ing about why I’m dread­ing going home. It’s not as if I don’t love my home, or how My Lovely Wife and I (mostly My Lovely Wife) have turned it into a wel­com­ing, warm, work­able envir­on­ment. It’s more that being out here has allowed me the space to wind down, look around, appre­ci­ate what I’ve got, shud­der in hor­ror at the var­ied ways in which I’ve squandered or taken for gran­ted those things over the past year, and try to con­coct ways of NOT doing that in the future. The thing about home is that it’s where all my bad habits are, habits of mind and habits of action. 

I think about the ways I go through days, what I get right, what I get wrong. The ways I keep myself informed and the ways I wind myself up. How often the two are kind of inex­tric­ably linked to each oth­er. I think about how angry I am, or can be, and how destruct­ive that anger can be…and also how con­struct­ive, in its way, how it’s fed in to oth­er cre­at­ive pro­jects over the past year, and even to some polem­ics. I want to deploy my ener­gies into con­struct­ive, cre­at­ive out­lets, but I know that more often than not my anger feeds my sloth, which feeds my insolence, which feeds into a com­pul­sion to shoot from the hip, or whatever you want to call it. I know that it’s right to be out­raged by the reward­ing of mediocrity, and by mediocrity itself, but I also know that rail­ing against it in the ways that are most obvious—the ways I’m most prone to turn­ing to—gets very little done, finally. I look at the New Year and I wish I had a for­mula to instant­an­eously make everything make sense, and I know that no such thing exists. But I raise my head and look at these people I love, who have giv­en me so much, and I feel kind of unworthy of them, and wish I could snap my fin­gers and con­jure a bet­ter self to be sit­ting here. Not pos­sible, I know. And what is pos­sible seems…well, seems like it’s gonna take a lot of time. Wonder if I ought to take up tran­scend­ent­al med­it­a­tion. David Lynch sure is a con­vin­cing pros­elyt­izer for it. Works for Clint Eastwood, too. One thing I under­stand from hear­ing them talk about it is that focus, finally, is all. And we’re all, to some extent, in a busi­ness, a cul­ture, that thrives on distraction.

Also, I’d like to lose sixty pounds or so.

Ah, well. The amaz­ing break­fast Claire’s been work­ing on since last night (which will not help me lose sixty pounds) is almost ready. Later we’ll be vis­it­ing the folks next door, who, as a fam­ily activ­ity, watched The Girlfriend Experience on Thanksgiving night (really!), and appar­ently the head of that house­hold has a lot of ques­tions for me. I’m gonna wear the blazer I wore in that pic­ture over to the house, because why not?

Happy New Year, all!