New Year, New City?

So I have a bit of a confession to make.

I'm not always the most organized when it comes to following through on things.

This blog, for example. I was doing so well for most of the year, and then, when I started having problems in my personal life, I shut it down. You might think this is exactly what blogs are made for, airing dirty laundry in the stiff breeze of the internet. However, this is not 2001 and this is not livejournal (though I did have one and looking back at old entries is profoundly embarrassing). So for a few months, I posted ambiguously whiny entries, got a second job, focused on trying to fix what was going wrong, and, failing, let my life devolve into a nasty cycle of self-pity and money spending.

But it's a new year, right? And we should all focus on what is good and nice around us? That's the standard line right?

Well, I can sort of see that. But to even glimpse it, I'm staring through a stained wall of bullshit.

It's a new year, yes. And I'm going to focus, once again, on doing things right. But this does not mean terrible shit didn't happen. If I ignored all the problems I've had these last few months, I wouldn't be learning....hell, I'd be Sarah Palin, ensconced in a bubble of ass-kissers six times deeper than 'The Human Centipede'.

In December, my dad almost died. He didn't, in large thanks to well-trained EMTs and a medical device that we didn't have two decades ago. And now, he's doing his damndest to get back to a normal life. That's what I need. That's why I have to...not ignore the shit around me, but see it, acknowledge it, and use it to be a better person.

This is sounding like a drizzling self-help essay, but there are the rare occasions when those are good. The city that I live in could certainly occasionally use them. I drive past more homeless, more liquor stores, more darkened street lights and broken glass in a week than I ever saw in my whole life before I moved here. I'm not saying that we should ignore that. We shouldn't. But we should see it, and make a goddamn effort to not sit on our asses, say "it's not my problem" and turn on cartoons. I'm going to try that this year.