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Wednesday, December 31, 2014

2014 in Pop Culture: My New Year's Dream (Because Nobody Keeps A Resolution Beyond The Eleventh)

December 31, 2014

Well, here we are!  The final day of 2014!  And I suppose that if there is a song that could best describe my feelings towards the end of the old year, this 1969 single by steam would do it.



Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, GOODBYE!

I'm not going to beat around the bush here.  2014 was not my greatest year at all.  If there is anything positive that I can say about 2014, it is that it is not the worst year that I have ever had.  Frankly, there is nothing that could ever top 1997 in that regard.

1997 = Rock Bottom Year

But, since this is New Year's Eve, and New Year's Eve is often a time of simultaneously looking back and looking forward, I may as well offer my own personal thoughts of the year gone by, and how it has shaped me.



After all, this is part five of a seven day look back at 2014 - well, minus the Tuesday Timeline yesterday as it didn't really count that much, but for the sake of argument let us just go ahead with it.

Obviously, the major news in my own personal 2014 story was the fact that my mother got very sick that year.  Towards the end of 2014, my mother developed an illness that kept her hospitalized for some time.  Again, I don't really want to go into too much detail over what ailments she had, as I don't think it would be appropriate to share in a blog post, but I will say this.  She was very lucky.  She has improved one hundred per cent, but she still has to take it very easy.

I tell you, that was probably the time in which I felt the most afraid and the most vulnerable was during that time.  And I am going to be honest, these past few months were not a good time to try and keep everything perfectly balanced in my life.  I had a few periods of breakdown thinking about everything that was going on, and I sank into a bit of a depression in the last half of the year.  So, if anyone is looking forward to 2015, it is definitely me.

Other than that, 2014 was kind of a boring year for me.  Sure, I did get the chance to attend a wedding, I attended the local rib festival, and I did take part in the Relay for Life again this past year.  There were some good moments mixed in with the really bad ones, which helped a lot.

And, if anything, 2014 was the year that I finally decided that I wasn't going to allow any further toxic relationships in my life.  I purposely distanced myself from toxic people at my workplace (usually the ones who are 100% negativity and drama), and I probably unfriended a good 10% of the people on my social media contacts listings because they showed their true colours to me. 

By the way, thank you Jimmy Kimmel for inventing the "National Unfriend Day".  More unfriending of toxic people and feeling less guilt about it because you're technically observing a non-traditional holiday?  I can live with that.

Still, I kind of think that 2014 was meant to be a challenge year of sorts.  Nothing that I wanted to happen in 2014 really happened the way that I wanted it to happen.  And, to be honest, I did make a lot of excuses for why this was the case.  Let me tell you.  Making excuses doesn't work.  It just makes you feel more hopeless than you initially were before you made the damn excuses.  If that makes sense, that is.

I guess the lesson that I took away from 2014 is that in this world, you can only rely on yourself to create your own happiness.  And, sometimes you have to make choices that other people cannot or will not understand because it is absolutely necessary for survival.

I don't believe in New Year's resolutions, as every time I have tried to make one, I always end up breaking it by the eleventh or twelfth of January.  But what is another word for resolution?  Declaration?  Guarantee?  Closure?  See, none of those actually work.

How about New Year's Dream?  Yes, that sounds more realistic.  That way if everything goes according to plan, I can always say that my dream came true.  If not, well, I guess it wasn't in the stars. 

Yep.  New Year's Dream.  Let's go with that.

My New Year's Dream for 2015 is to be more selfish.

Um, wow...that sounded really horrible!  Let's strike that from the record shall we?

My New Year's Dream for 2015 is to be more selfish to show myself more love than I am used to, and to stop bullying myself.

Yes, that sounds MUCH better.  Because one thing that I have figured out is that I am my own worst critic.  When something goes wrong, I blame myself and tend to hide away from everyone because I feel ashamed and can't face people.  It could explain why I have a difficult time dealing with people in social settings.  And, if there is ANYTHING that I want more in this life, it is for me to look in the mirror and actually be proud of the person looking back at me.

I honestly have no f@#$ing clue how to do this, mind you.  But I owe it to myself to try.

Because that, right there, is what is holding me back.  Now, I have given myself some "soul food" over the last few months.  I have cut out all toxic people from my life, and I am trying to look on the bright side of things.  But there is still a lot of negativity that I want to rid myself of, and I feel like it won't fully go away until I find a way to tell myself that I am worthy of so much more than what I have.

And, when I say this, I definitely don't mean material goods.  I absolutely don't care about material goods at all.  I have everything that I really need in life that can be bought with small bills.



What I really want the most for 2015 is to be happy...and not feel guilt about it.



Because in the end...isn't that what we all want?

I'll be back on the first day of January in the new year to talk about the Tube Talk Moments of 2014 that people couldn't stop talking about. 

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