2008

A new year...yeah, I could have written on the first day, but why? Everyone starts something on the first day, so I wanted to start on the 7th, but here, on the 8th day of 2008 I struggle to put words and thoughts together-stir them like a flavorful beverage for the "of age" and pour them out across cyberspace for any and all to sample. 2008...how many human beings will ask themselves the most common start of the year question- "What will become of this Year-for me?"...or some variation thereof. Basically, what does this new year hold? We want to know, but not really. The new year is the final Christmas gift, that you open every day for another 365 days...never quite knowing just what it might be-perhaps having an idea, but each day the present could be a surprise.

Maybe that is why Christmas was placed right next to the New Year, in our oh so conveniant Roman calendar. You may escape God on Christmas, by taking Christ out with your bevy of expensive gifts and shopping mall attitudes, but you must reckon with your past sins and deal with the possibility of a new beginning on the New Year...some may say whatever, but most of you to include myself, think of some type of change come January 1st. Some sort of resolution we, deep in our hearts desperately wish to hold on to. The New Year brings forth reflection and evaluation...and at times repentance and the quest for forgiveness. Still, by February, most of that newness of renewal of virtue and all that jazz has faded from our short term memory and many-to in the past include myself-are back to being the same person we were prior to the resolutions. But there is always next year, right?

Maybe, and maybe not. Still, this year, 2008...well, I want to try and stick to some of that which I told myself. I want to complete some chapters in my life and possibly become the man that I have been putting off. The man I have been putting off. Think of that. I have been, like many, procrastinating with regard to becoming the best I can be in life. Acting as if what I have been giving, to myself no less, was enough. Like saving the best of me, for later...but later has no date, no time stamp, no actual address or destination point. Later is simply that. Not now but sometime in the not so distant unpromised tomorrow. 2008, I want to do better. Work toward that man...the guy I see myself as. The man I long to be.

I know all this may sound like much of the conversation that has gone on in your own head, or some melodramatic movie that played over the holidays-a Christmas Carol comes to mind, but it comes a time in a man's life when he must make decisions about his future. I mean a woman must too, so in a human's life...but there does. It is like I see people younger than me who have life by its reigns and who seem totally in control of their future...their destiny tied entirely to the desires of their heart and mind. Then there are the other millions of us who plod along the path of existence merely existing. Alive, but our spirits are dead...souls without a song.

So I testify here, before the entire free world that I...well, I begin the revolution today. The revolution to take charge of my life, and to encourage others to do the same. It does not have to be alot, just do something this week that is of your heart's desire...anything, and enjoy yourself. Live, if only for a minute and escape the mundane. You are truly all that you wish and think you can be...allow yourself to cast off fear and exercise a bit of those dreams locked up in the cavities of your mind. Be more human...and then, by next year this entry will be pointless. You may come back to it and say it means nothing...for everyday is to be lived as if it were the last one here. In 2008, make no excuses...just live. As for me, well, I will keep you posted on my new adventures oh so frequently...peace and happy new year.