A Year in Review - and full speed ahead

My New Year’s resolutions start today.  I could lean back in my recliner and pat my belly with the rest of you heathens for another few days, but I’m not going to do it.  Why wait for the ball to drop?  If you want to kiss her, go ahead and fucking kiss her.  Stop wasting my time.  Buckle up motherfuckers, and start sharpening that blade.  We live in a strange world and shit can get weird in a hurry.

2014 has been a chaotic year.  I’ve spent the final quarter it living like a relocated witness in Palma Mallorca, Spain.  If I had resolutions last year, I probably failed to meet them, or they changed during the process.  Does that bother me?  Sure.  No one wants to suck at life.

I’m not going sit here and diagram how 2015 is going to be different.  You don’t need to know my goals, just like I don’t need to know yours.  If improvement is in order, sacrifices must be made.  So this year, expect to find me smeared with sacrificial blood and grinning like a madman.  Maybe I’ll fail again this year.  Maybe I’ll fail for the next ten years in a row, but I’m not allowing myself any more excuses.  And if I do fail, I’m going to make sure it’s thunderous. 

Work harder, try harder, do it better.  Have fucking fun during the process.

Writing is a solitary activity.  I don’t mind that.  But there are some downsides to it.  Competition – I think it drives improvement.  There are a few writing communities, but they’re all run by packs of old women who spend their time knitting and spoon feeding each other soft, fiber rich foods.  I can’t afford to pay to play in their contests where the winner is typically a poignant sonnet describing the blossoming flowers of spring.

I don’t give a fuck about their flowers.  I want to grow as a writer, in all aspects.  Period.  So take this as an open challenge.  I need to find writers; writers with some balls, who aren’t okay with standing in line and waiting their turn.  Other rejected assholes, like me, who spend unhealthy amounts of time slouched behind their keyboards, believing they have something interesting to say.

Will this type of competition work?  When Muhammad Ali fought Joe Frazier, they both got better – so maybe there’s something to it.  No more sitting around and waiting for shit to happen. I’m sure I’ll get frustrated and slam face first into walls of various textures along the way.  But it’s not going to stop me.  Neither are you.

Make some goals.  Write them down.  Slit that goat’s throat and smear the blood across your face.  It’s a new year, and it’s all up to you.