2014 Will Be “Epic”

Stop trying to make “epic” a thing, everyone. Epic came and went like “fetch” sadly never has. BUT. While I’m opposed to “epic,” “Epic” (capital E) is entirely different.

                             

It’s a genre. And with that,  all of you click away from this blog because: duh.

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Every January 1st, or around this time, facebook/news-outlets/twitter/tumblr/friends/real-life/etc. all start to either embrace, really or ironically, or denounce, the “new year resolution” way of being.

1) Goal: Fit hegemonic beauty standards for white, cis men. (Every year I’ve made this goal and oops! Always a fail. Sixpacks are like the elusivity of Mew, or so I’ve been told.)
2) Goal: Stop doing (x) “bad” habit: binge drinking, smoking, doing tons of drugs, having “meaningless” sex, procrastinating, hating myself, never leaving my bed . . . . (I’m stubborn, so my bad habits, some/most/none/whatever, usually do end when I tell them to. However, not all of them. Bad habits are like dark chocolate, “healthy” if you do them a little bit at a time.)

Don’t get me wrong. I love goals. I love planning. I love aims. My friends constantly remind me about how obsessed I am with the future and how I want to get things just right. With this in mind, however, most new year resolutions, on a global (everyone) and local (me), level tend to miserably fail on one if not ALL of these goals. But its not so tragic, rather it’s a comedy of errors. All of us fail every year, right when we want a fresh start.

{Busting your ass at the gym EVERY day all day long for a week so that by the time you quit working out you’ve done your body more harm than good, you’ve exhausted yourself and made yourself sick, and now you feel even worse.}

                              

                                        For the strong of heart: treadmill fails.  

{You tell yourself you want to be more (a)social so you’re either overwhelmed and crying in public or underwhelmed crying at home. And for us intro/extrovert mixes whose lives a constant balancing act of ways we get recharged, we’re left crying everywhere always.}

{Trying to fix your life by yourself  rather than seeking help from friends, family, your community, or from other “professional” people always ends badly. Not only do you fail yourself but then you lose any hope of doing anything alone. AND in this individualistic, capitalistic society,  personal failure isn’t bad it’s evil. So now you’re Satan, surprise!}

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Instead of making “goals” this new year, I’ve decided to make changes. I refuse to have a life that maps too well onto a comedy of errors and not, instead, onto an Epic. Changes lead to goals, but I don’t want to pretend to myself that I know where I want my life to go in a year from now. I don’t even know where I’ll be, let alone who I’ll be, in a year from now. 2015 is just as opaque as 2013, so I will stick to the present.

Some of my changes include:
1) “Evaluate life more often.”
2) “Love more freely and deeply.”

I’m just going to leave those here.

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My main plans for this new year is to embrace change. I will be turning in my thesis in 3 months. I will be graduating in 5. I will be travelling to Europe in 6. I will be taking the GRE in 8. I will be *hopefully* moving in 9. “3-6-9 you drink wine, monkey on your back you feel just fine.” I’m out of wine, I hate monkey massages, but Cat Power still gets me.

By making these changes–big and small alike–my life really can’t fail. This is the main thing I hate about New Years resolutions. All goals cannot be met or else the world would be a different place. Failure is imminent and I will either queerly embrace this art or thrive in redefining what success/failure/change/goals mean to me insofar as I can change my life one way. Change it back. Change it differently. So for me I resolve to make changes and that way I either change or stay the same. I cannot fail.

Thus, there’s really nothing that can go TOO wrong. Somedays I’ll be seduced by Calypso, others I’ll have to battle “the Citizen,” but I’ll learn something from each interaction, each movement, each path I take. And that, my friends, will be my Epic new year. Always learning, always growing, always reflecting. So when I get to 2015, I’ll have my adventures mapped out, the places I’ve seen remembered, the people I’ve loved etched into my heart, and my existence will transform into a 800 page novel with many more volumes to come.