New Year’s Resolutions are bullshit: why nothing will be accomplished before you die
IS YOUR LIFE STARTING TO CHANGE FROM YOUR 2018 NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS?
Well, friends, we’ve burned through 53 days of 2018, and March is right around the corner. We should do a quick assessment of our progress against our 2018 New Year’s resolutions!
I’ll go first…
FIRST RESOLUTION: Submit my book manuscript by January 10, 2018. (I’ve been writing it for a year).
STATUS: Manuscript submitted 2/15/18. That pushed it and all of the downstream goals back by five weeks right along with it.
SECOND RESOLUTION: Make amends to my wife for all of the harm done to our marriage of 35 years by my 42 years of active alcoholism.
STATUS: Our relationship is worse than before alcoholism was lifted from me. I assumed that shit would take care of itself.
I really fucked the pooch on this one.
REALITY CHECK BOYS AND GIRLS!
Okay, teammates. I’m not going alone here, with only my sorry-ass story.
How are all of you doing on your resolutions?
It takes 21 days to form a habit, comrades. Since we’ve worked our way through 53 days, everyone should be speeding along on the resolution train, right?
Are you on-track for losing that weight?
Consistently eating healthy, wholesome foods?
Are your exercise resolutions a routine habit in your life now?
How about your relationship resolutions? Service work?
Are you making good progress on your financial savings goals?
How much money do you have bundled up in that Savings account by now?
Let’s be honest comrades. If we tallied all of ours collectively, it would sound like the Gong-Show.
The gongs will sound even louder on December 31, 2018.
BEWILDERED?
Why is it that every year you find yourself bewildered at how your deeply committed and spiritually inspired resolutions evaporated?
Procrastination: “to put off habitually the doing of something that should be done.” (Merriam-Webster Eleventh Edition)
I love how they use the word habitually in that definition. Seems procrastination is the only activity we have made habitual.
Resolution + Procrastination = Res-illusion.
Commonly referred to as delusion.
You know why? Because everyone thinks they are immortal, that time is on their side.
It’s not.
We’re all working against death, even though most people have detached themselves completely from their personal, impending fate.
We’re all working against death, even though most people have detached themselves completely from their personal, impending fate. #alcoholism #resolutions Click To Tweet
HERE’S THE DEAL
We are all born with the same ancient architecture in our brains. Every human being has a powerful drive for survival, an innate need etched in the granite of our psyche.
We don’t choose this, it’s in us when we pop out of the womb.
Deeply embedded within this ferocious survival drive is a need for meaning, a purpose in our life and a need for belonging.
These are primary forces in our life, not secondary rationalizations. Here’s where the alcoholic really gets fucked by The Stranger.
Make no mistake, comrades.
The Stranger has a drive to murder you. First, though, He’ll rape you of your dignity, self- respect and get you alone.
So much for Survival, Meaning and Belonging for the alcoholic.
A completely wasted life, in every dimension, taken to its ultimate end.
We’ll be dead, murdered savagely, so survival’s a joke. We’ll have no meaning whatsoever in our life. Zero dignity and self-respect. And, the only one we belong to is Him.
Every human being has a powerful drive for survival, an innate need etched in the granite of our psyche. #alcoholism Click To Tweet
DO SOMETHING THAT MUST BE DONE NOW
If you are an alcoholic and want even a scrap of meaning or purpose, of belonging in your life, Wake the hell up and do something.
Reach Out for Help. Right Now. Not tomorrow, Not in a week, Today. Or The Stranger will sneak up on your dumb-ass and murder you without even a hint. He did it to me. He’ll do it to you. Or Albert Camus will be right: “…For anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful. Hence, one must choose a master, God being out of style”
You chose a master, The Stranger. Get a divorce. Find a Higher Power of your choice.
To vicariously experience first-hand the brutal rape of dignity and belonging, look for my book I Almost Murdered a Complete Stranger: Embarrassing Truths of a Madman’s Journey. It will be releasing in April, but for a special sneak peak, click here and receive the first two chapters totally free by signing up for my mailing list.