A Year in Review

It's 2014. 2014. We're nearly as close to 1980 as we are to 2050. Just let that sink in for a bit.

While our inevitable spiral towards the great mystery that is the future continues, I'd be amiss not to at least least a few words on the year that was. It's always hard looking back on a year and judging it either wholly good or bad. Each year seems to flash by in but a second, and yet when you examine it in its entirety, you see that there actually was a lot crammed in there! So while there may be great sadness, there will undoubtedly be great joy as well. And even if it were all terrible from January to December, as you know from my previous posts, hardship is what builds you as a person, and it is in those hard years that you truly live.

Last year I feel I did not truly live. There were moments of wonder and new beginnings, but for much of the year I felt dormant. Not happily content, but just… as if I was barely existing. Drifting from one experience to another, with hardly a notable moment between.

This year, that is changing. I didn't even wait for New Years and its cliche resolutions; I started at the end of December. Focus. Motivation. Happiness. I know it sounds like a tired routine from a freshly-brainwashed optimist, but I've already felt a change. I was lying in bed one night and I saw it all roll out before me. My life. Before me as I stared up into the dark ceiling. Each day ticking away. Tick. Tick. Tick. Every second closer to my death. You can't change it. As they say, death and taxes. In that very moment I was scared. Like I was on this terrifying rollercoaster (I love rollercoasters, but the very thought of this one was spine-chilling), that I could neither stop nor avoid. Every moment in my life whizzing by as I sat on the seat, screaming until the bitter end. I was not afraid because of death, but because of how I was merely a passenger in my own life. Watching it tick tick tick away as if it were on a petrol metre just beside me. Each day sitting around doing nothing, another tick of the pump emptying into oblivion.

Scary. It's hard, but I'm changing this. Breaking habits and stopping the negative thoughts that come with living in such a dormant state is certainly hard, but I'm doing it. I don't want to look up and see I've reached the end of the roller coaster, and feel that sadness I know will come if I look back and see I've never really taken part in life.

The Winner's Bible. I've been reading this book, and I'll tell you what, it's one of the most intense and amazing books out there to help you out if you're feeling anything like I am. I'm about a third through, and already I'm waking up feeling more and more focused. If 2013 was the year of absence, then I know 2014 will surely be the beginning of the lifetime of experience and happiness I know I'll find.

So what of 2013? Highlights would definitely have to include my trip to Singapore. Sports victories. Dates (those which didn't work, and those that… did). Getting on TV. Making new friends, even if it meant saying goodbye to many who I realized weren't. Kittens and all their trials and joys. Probably just as many that I've forgotten as well.

Well, here's to a great 2014. May it forever be the year I re-began my life. I hope it brings as much joy to you as it already has to me. There's something about a New Year that says you can do anything, be anything and no matter what happened last year, there is always a new day...

Sometimes I Lie...

It's been a stressful week, so I felt compelled to write something. Between booking flights and accommodation for a stay in Singapore later this year, the super storm which has partially destroyed my house, the stress of kittens, rabbits, cats and then taking care of myself, and the clincher of lady-issues, you could say I've have my plate full.

The funny thing is, if someone were to ask me how I was doing, and not just this week, but in general, I'd almost always reply "good", sometimes "fine". Some friends would get more of the story, but for the most part, I will shrug off any opening to peek out from behind this facade which has formed to actually share the truth.

I'm not alright. Far from it. And yet I still can't bring myself to tell the truth. The truth that the perfect white lie that I pass off to people as we swap pleasantries is a macabre fabrication to disguise the hurtful reality. When the moment comes, I swallow that pain, that inner turmoil, and after a while, it almost becomes a feeling of accomplishment. That I've somehow gained a place in the leaderboards of silent suffering and its macho companions. Even as the weigh pushes down on my heart - and really, that's exactly how it feels; a heavy weigh that lingers in my chest, slowing my every move to a crippling halt - I somehow feel a strange joy in that I was able to fake my happiness, as if it brings me closer to the real thing.

It doesn't. If anything, it draws me ever away from being happy, and isolates me in my own private hell. I'm tired of regurgitating the same tired lines of what work I'm doing, how my plans for the year are, if I'm excited for some upcoming event. Sometimes I just want to scream the reality in peoples' faces. Scream that no, I'm not finding work easy because employers don't even reply back. That I'm not excited about the coming week, because the last several have frankly been shit. That sometimes I question my existence and role in this world, and the direction I'm headed. If I'll find that happiness I so easily conjure. Behind my nodding eyes is this pain, and each time I swallow it back down and act completely unaffected. The shame I feel. If I told. If I shared my reality. The ignorance I know that wouldn't understand. Or would try to and make things worse.

The storm has at least brought some comfort, even if it's morbid in a sense; the tree out front has crashed into the garden, wiping out half of it. Two stories of hardened bark and tangled branches. It's like a once great monolith, now left to linger in the sands. Its wrinkles and grooves withstood decades of life. And then just like that it all was too much. The wind was too strong. It's root support not deep enough. Just a little tip and there it lies in the soil, a metaphorical reminder of the lives we live. I've been hacking away at it for several days now, with just a $1 saw, a hatchet and a sledge hammer. I can relate to the tree. I wonder if it is lying there weeping for itself. As it watches silently as it is taken apart where it once stood so proud. I feel bad cutting its branches. Some of the twigs still believe they're alive and reach out to the sun, not knowing they're already doomed. In a way, it also makes me feel a bit better knowing at least someone out there is having just as bad a day. And then it's just a pile of splinters, bark chips and sap, and I've got not a friend in the world who can share the pain.