One month to go

I am about 48 days into my New Year's resolutions. I am extremely surprised that I have held out this long. The strangest part is that it isn't nearly as difficult as I imagined it to be. Not drinking and going to the gym have become automatic. Almost 7 weeks without alcohol has left me feeling more refreshed than I've been in the last 10 years.

10 years...

10 years ago I started taking Kung fu lessons. I got my first car. I was much lighter, much faster, much smarter and much much more innocent. I was looking forward to college, I was wistful about the friendships I would lose and naive about the ones I would keep. I was young, I was foolish, I was scared and I was hopeful.

Today I find myself at a crossroads or rather I have been driving without brakes for the last 5 years and I've finally run out of gas. Several weeks ago I made a conscious effort to change and despite many failed attempts in the past, this one seems to be sticking. In a month's time my self-imposed restrictions expire. I will be free to drink, gamble, spend and eat like a degenerate monster. But doing those things doesn't fill me with the same giddy anticipation that it used to. I don't know when self-destructive behavior lost its appeal, but maybe that's a sign that I am officially getting old.

Today I told an old friend that, "we may not be where we want to be or have all that we want to have, but we have LIVED more than 99% of the world ever will." That's not just another classic Antonio Wong delusion of grandeur, that is a statement of fact. We have defied the odds, we have defied convention, we have both shattered and embraced the cliches of the good life. We have done the same for the bad life. We have been extremely fortunate and proportionately unfortunate. Life is not a contest, life itself is the prize. In my incredibly sober state I have learned to appreciate it and to truly savor it. Not just the moments of obscene extravagance, but also in the reliable rhythms of the daily grind and even in the middle of the mind numbing boredom on an uneventful Saturday and during the frustrating stresses of a Monday through Friday packed into a single Tuesday afternoon.

People often say that they are too busy to enjoy life and when X happens then they'll relax, then there are those who want to live life and use their faux carpe diem philosophy to excuse their extreme inability to face the fact that life comes as a whole. To try and ignore the troublesome bits is just a foolish as those they are trying not to emulate. Having walked on both sides of that line, I think I'm beginning to understand how this craziness works...

Looking forward 10 years I think I'll say pretty much the same thing; I am young, I am foolish, I am scared and I am hopeful. I don't know what's going to happen and I think that's the point.