Out with the Old

1 hour left, and one second too, if you factor in the leap addition that science uses to correct for the timing of the planet's rotation.  It has been an odd one, a mixed one, a lonely one - at times.  It has frustrated and delighted, as you have renewed acquaintances and stomped through favourite grounds of the past, and sailed familiar waters.  There were some magical goals, some tense baseball heroics, a beautiful interception return, yet ultimately disappointment.  You watched history unfold from the front row, and it felt inspiring and scary and maddening.  Many flights.  Many billable hours.  A few campfires.  Some real estate viewing.  But little overall progress in seeking out what may be new.

Except.  The deposit made on the Shackleton trip.  From 598 days then to 426 days now to even fewer soon.  Those three months have the ability to shake the foundations.  The King's MFA looming all the more likely, but perhaps as the escape hatch as opposed to a doubling of efforts.  The 880 house and its contents snatched from your grasp, but other possibilities and dreams still to be chased down.  Whether in this year, or next, or beyond, who can say?

My last delirium needs opening.  A pause - 12 mins in - while that gets arranged.

Back.  Delirium Nocturnum, an appropriate last taste of 2016.  That confounding year of loss.  Colleagues and idealism and motivation.  So many lie-in mornings and unkept resolutions, from the Edinburgh mirrors to the laziness of summer and fall.  The clothes slowly not fitting.  Garbage and laundry and paper piling up and going unregarded.  Nights of soft sadness, that have lost their kick, like Hickey's booze did.  And so you wait, and time passes, and you find yourself so much older than your memories.  So much time gone.  So much settling for the easy way out, for the paths of least resistance, risk avoidance, what you know, what causes the least discomfort, requires the least effort.

Can an arbitrary date be used to change it?  To flick a final switch and say, no more, get your shit together, time is wasting you in your hibernation and the relentlessness of the... sameness... will keep grinding you on absent a proactive change.  Absent decisions.  Absent work to physically and mentally right the ship.  Because it needs righting.  The messes need cleaning and the muscles need exercising and the heart needs to be stretched - in all manner of ways.

So.  It is not about the date, but it is the date that must be used to switch the thinking.  If it succeeds, then it's its own proof.  And it must.  So it shall.

I am always writing manifestos about health, about learning, never more so in reflecting on failed attempts.  The optimism in yourself, when needed, remains.  The half-marathon is booked, and will be done.  A start at the 26 stories, in preparation for refinement in the MFA, as well.  The ocean land purchase, to be explored further and seized if correct and true.  The visits to new countries to spark new PLANS, or incite action on old timeless ones.  And, for good measure, mark it with the first tattoo.

You know what to do.  You have the means, you need to show you have the will.  Starting not in a few days or at the beginning of the next month or upon return from another trip.  Starting in 2017.  Which is in 6 minutes.  Excuse me while I go see it in.

Go make it a kind and ferocious one.  I am so excited for the coldness of its waters, the silver dollar's reappearance, and all of the Unknown that will come next.