Welcome to The New Year. New Year, Old War, as the internet kids say… sort of. I’ve taken some liberties with the folks that misuse the word “manifest” and make resolutions. I’m not going to lie; I’ve made my own resolutions. I’m not going to tell anybody about them though because accountability has never worked to my best interest. We all know that it’s all about my best interest. I just don’t want anybody coming back at me a year from now using my own promises as a weapon. That’s the cruelest blow of all.

This is a slight departure from my listening trends of late, far removed from 30 year old Pacific Northwest metal dirges like Alice In Chains. It’s good to mix up vibes though. You can’t stay in the same groove every day and expect any change. Bad habits take shape faster than mildew on a shower curtain grows.

The video title pretty much says everything you’ll need to know about what you’re hearing should you choose to follow along. I’ll not bore you with that. This isn’t a music review. It’s just a share.

I stayed in last night, after an afternoon in the chilly breeze down at Coney Island. Something about facing the vastness of an ocean horizon levels me. It right-sizes me and all my earthly woes. New Years Eve was never my jam, not even when I was the man about town on most nights. It seemed a desperately thrown together last stab at enjoying life before getting to promises to “manifest” new greatness, blah blah blah. People attack New Years Eve like a revenge mission. Like they’re broke, hungry and owed payback for 365 consecutive days that didn’t exactly pan out the way they expected. It’s a bad energy.

Sober now for longer than a lot of revelers can legally drink, going out just always seems like a bad idea. Resolutions? Well, if you have to wait more than 24 hours to make a change, you’re behind the game so pinning it all on a single calendar date isn’t going to do much. Not that many sober people don’t make a big deal of it. Old habits are hard to break. it’s also usually done with the understanding that the resolutions will have to be renewed before Lent (usually by January 2nd, if we’re going to be honest). Enough on resolutions though. My advice would be not to make promises to yourself or anyone else that are tied to calendar dates. You’re setting yourself up when you do that.

I did read a passage today in 12 steps literature, incidentally, that layed out a laundry list of reasons for relapsing. There were no items on the list I haven’t heard discussed by people coming back, or trying to come back, after a slip. You can’t judge these folks. It’s too easy to fuck up. Sobriety requires a certain amount of practiced mindfulness and a lot of self-awareness. The world, as Annie says in Bull Durham, is not made for people who are cursed with self-awareness. Self-knowledge and self-awareness can be a double-edged sword. Some days you feel absolutely weightless and you float around defying gravity. Other days it’s like a hairshirt pawing roughly at your flesh. It’s miserable. Just keeping it real here. Sometimes the cure for what ails you is going to make you sick before it makes you better. You’re not going to find growth in your comfort zone though, and some days are going to be really uncomfortable.

Or you could go back to the passive-aggressive suicide of addiction, death by a thousand papercuts and all that.

Repeating the theme from yesterday, find your joy. Find your passion, but before you go looking for your passion, understand that passion is not a synonym for pleasure. Sometimes you have to love and chase things that hurt, or can hurt anyway. Not permanently harm, but hurt. You have to suffer if you want to sing the blues.

Find your passion.

My passion is not lofi techno, by the way, but sometimes music is about a soundtrack, a bit of background rather than a foreground pursuit.

Happy New Year.