My Own

The year is here. The year of the great the Dragon. 23 years ago I was born. I've been looking forward to this year as my year. A year where I can aspire toward something more - or less.

Twenty three. I look back on all that I have done. Things I have said, mistakes I've made, friends I've gained and lost, lessons learned... all chapters begin and end. To me, 2012 represents the grand opportunity of starting again. Of collecting the trials and tribulations of the past and observing them as a shore boarded sailor observes the storm still at sea. "I was there." So much has happened... I feel it longingly. It's a sad and true mystery of events gone now. All I can do is move on. I am a bull going on forever. Peering at the vast collection of works both complete and unfinished I see many inconsistencies in my progress. Two steps forward - three steps back. My drawings mere doodles on doodles. Endless doodles... feelings, none the less. Curious musical experiments and ideas laying about either in my mind or on my hard drive. Poems written.. some charged with emotion - others soulless and dull. All apart of a much larger experience - the experience of me. I've been wrong many times, I've been wronged by a few. It's the things that I got right which I emphasis with a more profound understanding (of self and others).
I came across a small notebook. Inside was my resolution for 2011. The date was set in early January. It listed everything I wanted to change about myself (at that time) throughout the course of the upcoming year. I read the entire list and took a moment to reflect. I thought something along the course of, "I wrote this in 2011 expecting to make all of these changes.. and here I am doing the same things and it's the middle of November! What happened?" I don't believe in the excuse "Life gets in the way." Life isn't something to get in the way of. Life is a constant. Nothing gets in life's way. Not even death. There is life in death. Death is not evil just as life is not necessarily good. But, they can't exist without each other. The changes I wanted to make couldn't have taken place without acknowledging that change was needed. So maybe I felt I didn't need to change. Or maybe I felt as if I could not. The feeling that swept over me once I had read that list couldn't have happened had I not written it down. What made me evaluate my myself was when I realized that I was feeling a that moment everything I felt when I made the list and then some. So something changed... not necessarily a good change, but a change indeed.
I can wasted no time blaming the past for who I am today. The past is an apparition come and gone. I am a constant, arguably so. The difference between the past and me is I can change - the past cannot (at least not yet. I'm sure the men in white lab coats and their funding associates are working hard at changing that fact). Change doesn't come easy. "Anything worth it hurts a little bit." A good piece of advice I picked up from a song. So I'm patient.. always have been. Asserting assertion into my life. Picking up the pieces. Completing tasks. I'm a better communicator. I read into peoples characters very deeply. I'm polite. Moderate. Consistently improving. I complete tasks. I lead myself toward good places. I am my own man. And I'm honest with myself. I'm happy. Thanks.