1 year late

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1 year late
by Antonio Wong on Friday, December 31, 2010 at 6:40pm

I had a grandiose summation of the decade planned out in my mind. A bittersweet nostalgia-filled recap of the first 10 years of the 21st century, a decade I began as a teenager and ended as a senior citizen. The pompous pontification, random references and revisionist recollections were all lined up. Unfortunately that decade ended last year. We are 364 1/2+ days into the first year of the second decade of the 21st century.



All days are not created equal. Today is December 31st, 2010. Right now, the crowds are gathering in Times Square, all manner of flesh is being stuffed into everything from too high shoes to too small dresses to too full ovens to too late guest lists. People all over NYC are preparing to do what people from Hong Kong to London have been doing for the last 12 hours. Get completely wasted and convince themselves that the passing of a particular moment in time when the last digit on their date stamp turns over to 2011 will usher in a new era, a clean slate, a fresh start.



Father time will fire a magic bullet into the temporal ether and erase the follies of the previous x number of years and this year will be different.

This year you will finally make it. This year you will figure it out. This year you will eat less, make more, drink less, love more, spend less, live more. This year you won't just be livin' on a prayer. This year you weren't born to follow. This year you will stop Always using Bon Jovi songs to make sweeping generalizations about life. This year you will stop giving love a bad name. However unlikely it is that this year will bring about any of the changes you so desperately seek. Take solace that this year will go by one day at a time just like all the other ones before.



A new year is just as good a time to start as any new minute you may come across. Change is possible, but not because you break open a new calendar or watch a thick Italian girl drop from the sky. Change comes when you commit to it without fanfare or proclamations.



Genuine sustainable change is a chain of individual decisions to go one way instead of another. Take enough steps to the left or right and eventually you'll turn around, take too many and you'll be headed right back where you were going before.



This year I turned in my wristbands, hand stamps, private booths, corner tables and the rest of the ballyhooed nonsense that preoccupies the minds of so many.This year I relapsed briefly and retraced some old ground. This year I discovered the power of no. This year I learned new answers to very simple questions.



Happiness is so ridiculously easy that constantly overlooking it is equally simple. Your life is like a gated community with varying degrees of security. Just about everything that makes its way in gained access with your full permission however unintentional it may have been. I have long since lost my wherewithal to try and help others see past the blinders of their own petty ignorance. I have also realized that it was my own petty arrogance that led me to believe I had a right and a duty to part fools from their stupidity.



Instead I have focused my efforts on keeping what I cannot change at bay. All that seeks to undermine my hard fought sanity and freedom will be held beyond the gates. Anything that threatens this peace will also be summarily exiled. It may not be the most elegant of systems nor does it engender much social interaction, but it damn sure is effective.



This year is mine.