The Golden Hours

As ever year passes and I get older and older I am starting to realize that all the joy in life happens in between those moments you plan for. The filler is the stuff that is really worth anything. You make plans and you work hard and you achieve goals only to have them supplanted by new ones that become more important. Old goals just become stepping stones to others you never knew you even wanted.

I spent the morning working on the car with my dad and the afternoon and evening with Cliff, Jeff, Dustin, and Nick. It wasn't a day that was supposed to be anything special but it was great. For once, I didn't have something I was working to get. I was just there, being impressed by my dad's ability to turn the chaos of scattered brake parts into a solution to my car problems of the last 8 months. I was there with my friends. My real God given friends that laugh at my stupid jokes, help me turn an afternoon into night, and make me feel like a million bucks.

And that's what it is all about. Not my goals, not my achievements, not my chores. It's about that stupid stuff. The older I get, the more of the former I get and more difficult it is to make time for the latter. And that sucks. But it's reality.

I'm only one of the billions of people running around this world. I'm not even one of the "important" ones and likely never will be. That fact is existentially heartbreaking and undermines any ambition no matter how great. Scale is devastating and not flattering when you think about what that means for you and the things you worry about and lust about every day. This isn't a new problem for me. Hell, my "coming to grips" with it inspired that italicized pair of words below Bad Teenage Poetry. Unfortunately, whatever resolution I had is now lost. And for the last couple of years it has begun to consume me. It makes me hate myself and the world I live in. Whatever trick of fate caused me to be stuck inside myself only serves to frustrate me more.

So, here is my new years resolution. Come to peace with myself to the extent that it is possible and start living for those in my life that give it any significance. This is cliche but I don't mean it in the traditional sense. It's not even something I need to do for them but for me before I destroy myself expecting more. This is hard. I'm simultaneously arrogant and self loathing and it is high time I broke from this. I'm no Algernon. It's time I let go of his chains. It's time I broke the cycle. Yet, a piece of me believes this may just be my tragedy. A tragedy of existence unfulfilled. A paradox of blessings and curses. Of unsolicited answers and unasked questions.

Maybe that's all there is.