2017 - The "Getting To Know Me, Getting To Know All About Me" Year

I'm not entirely sure how I am going to feel about the year 2017 at this time.  I usually need about three or four weeks before I can make a sound decision as to how the year is going to go.  I can easily say that right now it's good...but it's only three days old.  I guess right now, I'm taking a wait and see approach.

I'm also at the point right now where I don't believe in the idea of New Year's Resolutions.  Truth be told, I have resolutions that I made back in 1996 that I still haven't put into practice.  And given that one of those resolutions in '96 was to get a new Walkman, I'd say that one might be a little bit too late to achieve - not to mention outdated.

But I suppose that instead of a resolution for 2017, I'd rather do something called a New Year's promise.  And I figure that if I phrase it like a promise, it will give me more incentive to follow through with it.  At least, that's the way that my brain works anyway.  And yes, that New Year's promise is directly linked to that.

Of course, before I share my promise with you, some of you who have followed this blog all of these years might notice that this is the first Tuesday since 2012 that I have not featured a Tuesday Timeline entry.  The reason being is that I wanted to get through each day of the calendar at least once...and January 3 was actually the first Tuesday Timeline that I ever did back in 2012.  So, for the next eight weeks, Tuesday Timelines will now be known as Wayback Wednesdays.  I say it will only be for eight weeks because since 2017 is NOT a leap year, but 2012 was, I can go ahead and switch back to Tuesdays after the 28th of February because all of the following Tuesdays will be for dates that have not been accounted for yet.

Don't worry...it will all make sense once we get to February.  At least I hope so.

Anyway, this is my promise to myself for the year 2017.

And as you can already guess by the title of this blog - my promise is to get to know myself better.  I want to understand what makes me tick.  Why I feel the way I do.  Why I do the things I do.  I guess in a way, I'm ready to make 2017 the year that I psychoanalyze myself.

But why would any sane person want to do that to themselves?

Because I feel that if I can do this successfully, I can really sort of understand why I find it so difficult to fit in social situations, and why I always choose to run away from people instead of getting to know them.

I'm not exactly sure of how to go about describing these feelings, so I'm going to use some obscure pop culture reference that some of you may or may not get as a way to illustrate the confusion that I face each and every day.

Do any of you remember the cartoon series "Beetlejuice" that was loosely based off the 1988 movie of the same name - and when I say loosely, I mean they take the same characters and rewrite them so that they act nothing like they did in the movie?  It aired between 1989 and 1991, and it was easily one of my favourite cartoons of the late 1980s and early 1990s.  I even have the first couple of seasons on DVD to watch whenever I want.

Well, at the beginning of the second season of that show, Beetlejuice and Lydia want to get a car, but Lydia is too young to get a driver's license and Beetlejuice is...well, dead.  Fortunately, in the Neitherworld, the driving laws are quite lax, so they decide to buy a used car.

The problem that they have is that the car that they just bought has no brain (and yes, on the show they use actual brains for their cars), and Lydia sends Beetlejuice out to get one.  Well, in a sea of "normal" brains, Beetlejuice decides that their car would be better with an abnormal brain, so he buys that one without letting Lydia know at first.  The car is finished, and comes alive, and Lydia decides to call the car "Doomie" (which is short for Dragster of Doom).  And for the first few kilometers that they are on the road, Doomie is everything that they want in a car.

Well, that is until Doomie gets spooked by a barking dog, and the dog causes Doomie to go completely mental.  And it is here that Beetlejuice confesses to Lydia that he bought an abnormal brain for Doomie which makes Lydia very furious.  Doomie eventually calms down enough to get his bearings together, but when he overhears Lydia's doubts about him, Doomie runs away and drives himself to a junkyard where he feels that he would be better off as a cube of metal instead of a faithful traveling companion.  Fortunately for Doomie, Beetlejuice and Lydia rescue Doomie from being crushed and he remained a faithful and loyal friend to them both despite the fact that his brain was an abnormal one.

Now, why did I tell you this story/brief episode recap?  Well, let's just say that re-watching it now, I can totally understand where Doomie was coming from.

Mainly because I am Doomie without wheels.

From an early age, I sort of knew that I was not like other people.  I sort of knew that I saw the world much differently than others did.  And I think part of the reason why that was the case is because I feel that I was blessed and cursed with an abnormal brain, much like Doomie was.

I say blessing and curse because there are good points and bad points about it. 

Good point:  I can find solutions to problems by going outside of the box. 

Bad point:  I don't always have an explanation behind how I came up with the solution. 

Good point:  In most cases if I am faced with a problem alone, I can usually solve it without my stress levels going up.

Bad point:  If I feel any pressure to fix a problem without having ample time to fix it, my stress and anger levels go from zero to a hundred in the space of two seconds.  There is NO in between. 

Good point:  I can remember everything as far back as when I was four.
Bad point: I can remember everything as far back as I was four.

But you know, when it comes down to how my brain processes information, I find it really difficult to understand how it works.  I mean, yes, my brain allows me communicate well in the written word, but it refuses to help me out when I try to use those same thoughts in a spoken word conversation.  And as a result of that, it has made for a rather lonely existence.

At one point in my life though that was fine.  I always saw myself as sort of a black sheep in the community anyway.  No matter what I did, I couldn't gain acceptance anywhere.  It was almost like every single time I found a new friend to socialize with, I'd do something to either make them turn against me, or stop talking with me at all.  And a lot of the times I blamed myself for it even if the crumbling of the friendship was not my fault.  And in 2017, I want to do a lot less of that.

I also want to try and figure out why it is that I have such a hard time socializing.  At times, I completely feel like I am an extrovert trapped inside of an introvert's body - and the location of the key to unlock it is to be determined.  Truth is, I want the chance to have what other people have, but somewhere in my mind I keep telling myself that I don't deserve it, so I'd also like to try and find out why I feel this way.

And, I guess as much as I don't want to admit it...I guess I want to know myself more because I want to see if I'm really as "broken" or "damaged" as I really think I am, or if it's all just lies that people have fed me.  I think it could be a combination of both, but that's just my hypothesis.

One thing is for sure...my goal by the end of 2017 is to be more comfortable in my own skin and to actually find a way to get people to accept me for who I am...and not try to change me or shun me because I don't fit in with their status quo.

I just want to belong somewhere.

Hope you're ready, 2017...this is a personal journey that I need to take.