New Year's resolutions are for chumps*.
(*overweight chimpanzees)
I hate empty gestures and nothing rings hollower to me than year-end promises we make to ourselves and the world to change our lives for the better, though we know damn well they are doomed to be unfulfilled due to the insincerity of the whole enterprise. Unless, of course, these fibs are made under the influence of substances, controlled or other wise, which justifies the lack of judgement.
However...
These admissions are at the very least acknowledgements of one's shortcomings and failings as human beings. it could be a call for help for someone to desire to be better in this worsening world. Yes, even the best of us are in need of repair. If a declaration at the end of the year is as far as you get, then why bother at all? Shut up and drink your warm Zima, you sad sap.
That doesn't mean I don't believe in self-reflection. Are you kidding? I'm soaking in it. I could some improvements myself. Believe me, I know I'm not perfect. As hard as I try, I'm not even a perfect asshole.
So I'll go for the obvious here: I'm cutting down on the junk food, metaphorically, that is. In an attempt to reduce the abundance of stress in my life, usually due to knee-jerk reactions to people, places and things I find abhorrent, I am going to avoid them as much as possible. These are triggers for me, straining my interior plumbing with the very mention of them. The futility of these rages are usually against things I cannot possibly change, not unlike screaming at the sky to turn off the sun.
However #2....
I'm going to take a cue from Dennis Miller. Remember him? After changing his wicked, wicked ways, he's become a Conservative darling, sort of, and has gone into talk radio with a modicum of success. He can still find a decent point every now and then, such as his observations over the gross amount of unnecessary attention foisted on the current definition of "celebrities"-quotation marks permanently embedded due to their spurious nature. After some Lindsay Lohan debacle du jour, Miller suggested that instead of prolonging the spotlight time for these Frankenstein creations, we should merely shun them.
"A good old-fashioned shunning of these characters might make them go away," he said.
Beautifully put. Don't give these nabobs and n'er-do-wells the recognition of their very existence on the radar and perhaps their fifteen minutes will dwindle down to a few seconds, if any at all.
We are collectively aghast at the the Kadashians' popularity, but we feed them by paying attention to them at all. We give them power by buying magazines that feature their latest diets and affairs, watch any incarnation of their gawd-awful TV series (thank you, Ryan Seacrest) and make them the punch-line of every joke relating to whorish and privileged pop culture behavior. I just prolonged their longevity by typing their name into this posting. So let's cut 'em off at the knees. Don't watch E! or any network that promotes the, Stop reading magazines and tabloids whose pages they lay, among other places. Pretend they aren't there.
However the last...
It's not so much turning off emotions as it is changing the channel. I consider it cutting out the crap or, more importantly, taking out the trash. This can be applied to other facets that I deem anger-inducing too. It's a mine field out there and I need to use some fancy dancing techniques so I won't get blow up, taking everyone or some of you with me. Selective rage is the new name of the game.
So it's an experiment and I am a guinea pig of my own making. As I wind through this maze known as life, I need to pace myself, especially at this last stage.
Anger can be a powerful weapon is used properly. There's no reason to go off half-cocked or even prematurely.
I need to choose my shots. I'm running out of bullets.
Triggers...shots...bullets...
Uh-oh.
I hate empty gestures and nothing rings hollower to me than year-end promises we make to ourselves and the world to change our lives for the better, though we know damn well they are doomed to be unfulfilled due to the insincerity of the whole enterprise. Unless, of course, these fibs are made under the influence of substances, controlled or other wise, which justifies the lack of judgement.
However...
These admissions are at the very least acknowledgements of one's shortcomings and failings as human beings. it could be a call for help for someone to desire to be better in this worsening world. Yes, even the best of us are in need of repair. If a declaration at the end of the year is as far as you get, then why bother at all? Shut up and drink your warm Zima, you sad sap.
That doesn't mean I don't believe in self-reflection. Are you kidding? I'm soaking in it. I could some improvements myself. Believe me, I know I'm not perfect. As hard as I try, I'm not even a perfect asshole.
So I'll go for the obvious here: I'm cutting down on the junk food, metaphorically, that is. In an attempt to reduce the abundance of stress in my life, usually due to knee-jerk reactions to people, places and things I find abhorrent, I am going to avoid them as much as possible. These are triggers for me, straining my interior plumbing with the very mention of them. The futility of these rages are usually against things I cannot possibly change, not unlike screaming at the sky to turn off the sun.
However #2....
I'm going to take a cue from Dennis Miller. Remember him? After changing his wicked, wicked ways, he's become a Conservative darling, sort of, and has gone into talk radio with a modicum of success. He can still find a decent point every now and then, such as his observations over the gross amount of unnecessary attention foisted on the current definition of "celebrities"-quotation marks permanently embedded due to their spurious nature. After some Lindsay Lohan debacle du jour, Miller suggested that instead of prolonging the spotlight time for these Frankenstein creations, we should merely shun them.
"A good old-fashioned shunning of these characters might make them go away," he said.
Beautifully put. Don't give these nabobs and n'er-do-wells the recognition of their very existence on the radar and perhaps their fifteen minutes will dwindle down to a few seconds, if any at all.
We are collectively aghast at the the Kadashians' popularity, but we feed them by paying attention to them at all. We give them power by buying magazines that feature their latest diets and affairs, watch any incarnation of their gawd-awful TV series (thank you, Ryan Seacrest) and make them the punch-line of every joke relating to whorish and privileged pop culture behavior. I just prolonged their longevity by typing their name into this posting. So let's cut 'em off at the knees. Don't watch E! or any network that promotes the, Stop reading magazines and tabloids whose pages they lay, among other places. Pretend they aren't there.
However the last...
It's not so much turning off emotions as it is changing the channel. I consider it cutting out the crap or, more importantly, taking out the trash. This can be applied to other facets that I deem anger-inducing too. It's a mine field out there and I need to use some fancy dancing techniques so I won't get blow up, taking everyone or some of you with me. Selective rage is the new name of the game.
So it's an experiment and I am a guinea pig of my own making. As I wind through this maze known as life, I need to pace myself, especially at this last stage.
Anger can be a powerful weapon is used properly. There's no reason to go off half-cocked or even prematurely.
I need to choose my shots. I'm running out of bullets.
Triggers...shots...bullets...
Uh-oh.
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