The Solid (Sixty) Start: Part 1
An (over)zealous approach to quantum disentanglement.
This is a different sort of post, one I’d rather not make too expository—and one for which I intend to employ that structural element the popularity of which seems to me to be solidifying this platform’s reputation as one rather against literacy than for it: bullet-pointed lists.
Let it be sufficient to preface that last year was one of the worst in recent memory, following its close runner-up, the year immediately previous, which required only its concluding four or five months to qualify for the position. Of course, there were decidedly positive occurrences, the march of personal progress is as slow and subtle as it is nonlinear. The prevalence of awful circumstances and the frequency of rueful events amidst private breakthroughs—known or unknown, appreciated and opined—are at the very least mutually exclusive phenomena; though, as I believe is much more likely, and both for better and for worse, they are entirely interdependent. I suffered, and I am better for it.
Having in the last year or so discovered several unknown and fertile realms of creativity; and being convinced of my own deep and spiritual need to live a creative life, one in which the personal and professional are nearly indistinguishable; and having failed so miserably, so recently—and that when opportunity came very much of its own accord in the form of a truly dreamy invitation—I have once again gathered as much of myself up as I may to try again: to conjure another such opportunity, or failing that, to fashion, from the distillation of unprecedented will, one of my own making. I deserve better, and so what?
Whether my at-the-time unlicensed therapist’s suggestion of a diagnosis—of bipolar disorder—was, is, correct or not, I am nevertheless, admittedly, prone to delusion. (Who wouldn’t indulge in fantasies when they are so often, and so joyously, grand?) And while this present moment in my life feels different—and for this, too, I am nursing an acute awareness of having said many times—I cannot in good conscience risk expunging dim reality’s grimmest details for the sake of what I now hope so soon to savor.
But before I offer the first of those easiest to gloss, and in doing so measure out an ample dose of salt, the fantasy, the dream, unadorned, as it were, in the form of what some of us— not I, and certainly at such heights as the language thus far, rather at least since this article’ title, employed—would call, I think bathetically, pathetically and counterproductively, a New Year’s resolution.
THE RESOLUTION
From year to year, my personal goals have always numbered in the dozens. Ever since the age of fifteen or sixteen, I’ve been making lists: daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, seasonally; in the run up to a particular event or much-awaited trip; lists of ideas for essays, band names, works of fiction short and long, tattoos, gifts for my significant other—all of which I rarely, if ever actuate; I’ve even made lists of my lists, those I should keep, those better scrapped. So, of course, I make a fresh one featuring my more annual intentions, however perennially the items there featured return.