Let's get this New Year's party started

Thursday 1/1/26

New Year's Eve isn't a thing as it's thought of/venerated as and you shouldn't care. Nothing changes when the clock strikes midnight. Grow up, get a clue. Those resolutions? You'll ditch them straight away.

New Year's resolutions are like MFAs in writing--if you ever think you need them/one, you will never be that thing you say you want to be because you don't have it in you. If you did, you never would have thought along those lines. Can you imagine me ever having thought, "Oh, I should I go somewhere and be taught how to create art"?

Impossible, right?

And making art doesn't work that way and can't be made that way and couldn't be made by you if you are that way.

People who change things don't need or use New Year's to do so. They make a change on whatever random day and they stick to it because they have conviction and follow through. New Year's is for caprice people, and caprice people aren't serious people. Here is what New Year's can be: a little extra motivation to get you going better, harder. A jolt in that regard.

Use the jolt. That's it. Which isn't to say a jolt isn't useful or can't help actuate other better, bigger things. But if you were someone for whom a jolt could do that, you'd also be someone who'd essentially being having New Year's days, if you follow me, all the bloody time. Like it says in "Dead Thomas," every day is the start of a new year and the end of a new year. It's the end of a thousand years and the start of the next thousand years. It's about where you're counting from.

Look at the massive number of people who take to social media to boast about how old they are, which is always popular, but which becomes even more pervasive it seems at New Year's. I'm on the couch already, I'm so old, blah blah blah blah.

So die then. Be done. Move on. If that what it takes to shut your mouth and stop the complaining.

You are as old as you let yourself be. Often enough. I'm not talking about the octogenarian whose body is betraying them, if that's the word you wish to do. Failing them, might be better. Then again...that is the way of things. Were preventive measures taken? What you do right at thirty-five or sixty-five can serve you well at eighty-five. You're setting it up. Giving yourself better odds. Sounds like a wiser way to go, no? I'm talking, though, about mentally old with none of the wisdom that storybooks equate with advanced age. Bitch-whiny old.

Don't be bitch-whiny old. That isn't a gender thing. It's a verb thing. And an attitude thing. Which becomes the basis of a person thing, and the replacement for that person, in effect. The bitch-whine incarnate.

I saw this woman's Instagram page the other day. She had this photo of herself from an article in a local paper "pinned" as the first thing you saw. You know, in the grid of the photos, most of which are single-person photos of the person whose page it is, because no one has any interests, anything to share or give, and only care about worshiping their simple, oft-moronic selves.

Anyway, the article was about how she became a nurse at the age of forty-five. She'd been a dietician for many years, and then decided to make this change. Seems pretty logical and basic, right? As in, nothing to see here beyond, "Good for you."

Because that is cool. You're doing one thing, you want to do this other thing, you make the moves you need to and then you're doing that other thing. Kind of a parallel move, too, right? Dietician to nurse. We can see the logic in the progression. It's not like going from welder to heart surgeon. Or vice versa.

The shout-y headline of the article--which apparently this woman embraced--is that it's never too late to change. Again, this woman was forty-five. Forty fucking five. You can live another fifty plus years. It's not like she was eighty-three and became a nurse.

And even then...why not? Maybe you're a nurse for five years. Have a special relationship with the elderly who feel alone, whose kids and grandkids don't visit them, or never had kids and don't have anyone. I can see that. Would make for a good story.

But forty-five? You can be a quarterback in the NFL at forty-five and have very fast 280 pound men trying to knock you into Kingdom Come, and then get up and take the next snap.

People's attitudes are defeatist and self-defeating. I'm not talking about this woman, really, because she made her changes and got her new career. But how is this a thing? A celebration of "it's never too late"? I know the answer--because our attitudes fucking suck. We are lazy, moronic, excuse-making, standard-less, do-the-bare-minimum, bitch-until-our-jaws-ache slugs.

Have some standards. You can't escape people's whining. But they love it. They love to be less. Write that down: People in this world love to be less more than ever. And that's one reason why so many of them are so miserable and the world blows.

Three posts I just encountered from three different people:

Today, in a Target parking lot, a stranger noticed my phone in the snow and slush, picked it up, and left it safely on my windshield. On New Year’s Eve, after a hard year, that kindness hit deeper than expected.

Seriously? That kindness hit deeper? Because someone saw a phone in the snow and didn't think, "Ha ha ha, fuck that person, I'm leaving it there."

Again: Have some fucking standards. We're just dispensing with any expectations? We're awarding what isn't even the bare minimum? What kind of asshole would you have to be to leave that phone there? This isn't a thing. It's bending over and not being evil.

Then we have this:

Yesterday I ended a start-stop romantic dynamic with a sweet guy who couldn’t rise to meet me. I am taking myself out to an amusement park this evening to welcome the new year alone, but in peace.May this new year bring me blessings ✨

Lady, get over yourself. "...who couldn't rise to meet me." Fucking hell. Sounds like a nightmare of a person to be around. Then you get the girl power bit. It's always so inauthentic sounding. Contrived. "I went to an amusement park by myself! I'm like Rhoda!"

And then the mind-numbing narcissism of sending blessings to yourself on social media. Who the fuck does that? Well, lots of people, because people are vapid and shallow and insane now. That'll get you 800 likes and counting, though, in just a few hours, because we are a race of losers which celebrates loserdom and being as little as possible and not trying for anything more, let alone, the horror, being a great many excellent things.

Then there's this guy:

You know you're old and forgotten when you spend the holiday season alone

I am always alone and have been for many years. Am I old? How about forgotten? Hated, yes. But forgotten? Never cared for--there's that.

Look: People suck. And you have to know them for what they are. They care about themselves. Chances are they only care about you insofar as you give them what they want. Whether that's sex, someone to be with, the bolstering of their illusions, delusions, and lies to self, money, opportunities, adoration because they don't know any better and you've exerted what influence you can to bring this about, etc.

Most people aren't not alone because they're with someone they love who loves them. It's transactional. You give me this, I'll give you that. That isn't spoken aloud or necessarily even thought. What do people think? When do they ever think? What clue do they have about anything? Never mind self-awareness.

Please. Who is self-aware? Anyone now? Is anyone even capable of being ever-so-slightly self-aware? Mentally lucid enough? Brave enough? Strong enough? Focused enough? Consistent enough? Devoted enough?

You're gonna sit down and think--repeatedly--about who you are, your motivations, and deal in hard truths and work through complex emotions and pain?

Fuck no. No one's doing that. Everything in our world is designed for you not to do that. It's the basis of everything now.

They'll "binge" Stranger Things instead and post 4000 more photos of themselves and get drunk and finger the cat and live to lies. People don't rise to life; they live to lies.

With enough practice, they believe the lies and think they're truths--or do so long as they don't think about them too much. And no one's out there thinking, man. We're making sure we won't ever even be able to think again if we wanted to, and hardly anyone does.

There are less than 100 people in this world whose nature is to think of others first because that's the right thing to do in and of itself. I put it that way because there are others who think of others first because that's how they think they need to be to get what they want. That doesn't count.

I got up at 1 this morning here on New Year's Day. There's nothing to see here. There are things to be or to keep trying to be and places to get to.

People need to grow up and get some standards. And yes, I understand that people wouldn't get the Rhoda reference or use one. You can look shit up, too. Effort is free.