SELF-HELP RESOLUTIONS
I have two resolutions that I’m excited to share:
The first is canceling my first resolution. Did you know you could do this? I had an elaborate and specific resolution that I scheduled for the start of the New Year and IMMEDIATELY blew it. It was a bit more involved than working out three times a week or writing in a gratitude journal before bedtime.
What I wanted to do was go 365 days without reading any self-help books.
My life, I’ve realized, has become a sponge for any advice I can find. Call it the benefit of living in the Age of Everything (the internet, comparison, research, social media, whatever). For as long as I can remember I’ve sought out anything and everything that could shed light on what I was going through. Originally, self-help was designed as a tool – helping oneself, go figure – but has now turned into the goal. If anything went wrong in life, I’d look up the remedy, which was a temporary emotional band-aid, but never indented the larger scope of the problem. Eventually, taking the drug of self-help was all that mattered.
In other words: I had forgone living and was, instead, reading about how one ought to live.
And so I was determined to live a life independent about reading about an ideal one.
Triumphant as that resolution was, I immediately caved no less than fifteen hours into the New Year when I was feeling low and needed a pick-me-up.
As I flipped through the pages of a book from my shelf, I thought, “Is there a self-help book for being addicted to self-help books?”
Wherein I extracted a valuable lesson: When the remedy becomes a contradiction, get rid of the remedy.
So, I’ve eliminated that resolution. Instead, I’m sticking to my goal of living life while not actively seeking how others live for reference. For a few months, maybe.
I’m much more excited about the second resolution:
To post another Weekly Post-Ed.
It’s specific, achievable, and something I’ve been wanting to do for so long. Without further babbling, here’s a new one (finally!).
See? Goals are achievable—so long as they are bite-sized and easily consumable as actual bite-sized things. I assume I could eat this Weekly Post-Ed if I printed it out…
Am I getting off track? Gotcha, we’ll move on.
***
BALLS DROPPING
This New Year’s marked the first ever ball dropping in my hometown. Around 6000 attended, which was more than any local officials imagined since only two police officers were posted for duty for the entirety of the crowd. Cramming along a single avenue that acts as both the single exciting street in a smalltown (complete with restaurants, a performing arts theater, hockey arena, and a peppering of breweries offering a local culinary favorite: pizza), thousands hereded around a single crane that lifted a luminescent ball wrapped in Christmas lights high above the crowd. The adjoining buildings, no taller than three stories, acted as balcony party sights for those who could afford the new-age apartments that rival apartment prices in NYC (not to be outdone, the landlords are just as negligent when attending to faulty AC units and weird leaks from a guy playing AC/DC most of the night).
Driving to the downtown area would act as a perfect preview for the preferred scent of the evening. Every corner has sprouted a cannabis dispensary and patrons of the downtown area were well stocked. As one attendee of the event said, “I tried to smell anything else, even my armpits, but couldn’t.”
If the smell of cheap and expensive reactional marijuana (a mix that made for a “meh” combination despite the price point) wasn’t pervading the atmosphere of the ball drop, the mood surely shifted. Lines for alcohol ranged from an hour to the following fortnight, and the New Year’s reminiscing gave way to hallunicating optimism.
“Once the ball drops,” said one man, “we’re going to beat the shit out of it and get all the weed!”
During the course of several hits of weed, a New Year’s ball drop evolved from a celebratory event to reel in the new year to a birthday pinata bash. The two officers on duty were quick to ascertain the plot and apprehend the three or four brooms from those closest to the ball drop location.
As midnight came and went, drinks spilled and kisses given to loved ones and complete strangers, it was a night of jubilee in a small town. One city official was ecstatic about the event, stating the town “was back!”
Others, meanwhile, offered up constructive criticism. One hair salonist said, “Why was the ball so small? I mean, it was like my son’s little kickball size. Couldn’t they find something bigger? I like bigger balls.”
Well, don’t we all?
No official word has been given about budget constraints in terms of the small ball size, but many of the cannibus community had a fix that is catching a lot of attention.
“Just buy a second one and add it to the first one!”
One artist went so far as to draw a mockup for this proposal. Another offered a slogan to go along with it. With enough support, next year’s ball(s) drop will be another huge community hit.
[Balls on crane with slogan: 2025: Get Ready for Our Balls to Drop!]
***
2023 PLAYLISTS
I’ve posted four new playlists! They were my quarterly playlists from 2023 that have (finally) been posted. If the New Year was in desperate need of anything, it was an infusion of new jams to start fresh with. Why not click on one of the banners below and sample some of the best tracks from last year.
Pairs nicely with new gym memberships, I hear.
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A SMASHING NEW YEAR
Lastly, the site has a new look.
It’s hard to believe that on April 26 of this year, Super Smash Bros. will celebrate its 25TH anniversary. It’s even harder to believe I’ve played the same video game franchise over a 25-year period. When I think of what else I’ve done over such a long period of my life, nothing healthy comes to mind. Coffee drinker? Sure, since I was 14. Light sugar addiction? Even longer: maybe when I was just a baby. Other than having a sibling and parents for the entirety of my life, very little makes the cut of “Celebrating Our 25TH Anniversary!”
I would mention my previous marriage at the age of 4 to now super model Kate Ferrera, but unfortunately we divorced just before our 25TH anniversary. Unlike Super Smash Bros., Kate changed— she wasn’t a super model when we married, but everything changed when she moved away from diapers. It was a long descent into hell after that. Think of the movie “Walk the Line” starring Joaquin Phoenix, except picture the film starring a pair of toddlers with swaths of diapers and ants-on-a-log snacks in the place of drugs, and tantrums (not so different from the movie).
With the 25TH anniversary fast approaching, there was no better time to redesign the website in the style of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. It is the magnum opus of the series that includes every fighter from the entire series (the likes of Cloud Strife, Sonic the Hedgehog, Solid Snake, Ryu and Ken, Sora, Banjo-Kazooie, and on and on and on). This dizzying array of characters epitomized the clashing video game universe we all wished was real growing up. If anything, Super Smash Bros. became a banner title that showed that dreams really can come true.
Anyway, I gush…
It’s a fitting look for the New Year, I think.
***
I sincerely wish that all of you had had a safe start to the New Year. Maybe things will be easier (or maybe they won’t), but just know you’re not alone. I’ll be here, making playlists and tinkering with what to write next. Feel free to write in.
Wishing you as well as you can be. You’re not alone out there,
