Indeed, if the onset of a January is what prompting you to do these improvements, you are misguided. You could easily have done this on November 13.
But that's the way human nature is. It is why the biggest advertisers on TV and radio during the first week of any new year are diet programs like Weight Watchers or Nutrasystem. Heck, I did this myself in senior year of high school---the very first time I addressed being a fat kid. It is why January 1 is the one day in the whole year for the most new subscribers to Match.com or eHarmony.
I myself used to fall into this trap myself. This year, it turns out there were several days devoted to personal check-ins for yours truly. I recall it in what can be called a Sunday Short Term Memory Drawer.
There was physical health day. I had my annual examination with my general internist with the usual thousand bucks expenditure for blood work. The good news? Except for two creaky knees, I am in totally excellent health. My bloodwork is almost perfect. This is in contrast to the year 2015 where almost everything on the medical side for me went kablooey. I walked out knowing that, barring a careening dump truck crashing into me on Wilshire Boulevard, I'm very good to go for a while longer.
Then I experienced financial health day. This was important as I have a new cadre of financial experts dealing with my portfolio which, as a free lancer, becomes more and more important to help me exist. There's almost a portion of such a meeting where Len needs to be reassured that his portfolio is still very strong and growing. This year, there was a more serious discussion of what to do with my revered, but less needed New York residence. Do I sell? Do I sublet? An open-ended issue that will get further investigation when I go back there for a bit in March. In reality, I doubt that I will still have it three years from now because, after all, no one spends the third act...or, is it the second half..of their life living in Yonkers, New York.
The aforementioned third act of life is a notion that a writer-friend mentioned to me recently. If you look at everybody's life as a plot line or a story arc, you realize that each of us represents a work of art. Again, I'd like to think that I am still in the second half as opposed to the final third. But, as I myself look at the month of January and hear that my physical and financial future is relatively secure, I ponder a more important question.
Why do I resolve to do next?
Oh, not a resolution like losing weight or dating more. Every year, I pledge to read more and invariably don't. It's more of a coming-to-terms with writing and leaving some sort of creative legacy for others to behold.
It's no secret to close friends that I've got a lot of balls in the air on the creative front. One long-developed project has inexplicably stalled suddenly due to the lack of energy on the part of another. It is badly in need of a major swing from a bottle of Geritol, if that even stills exists. I vow on January 1 to find that source or person, even though, in reality, the true energy needs to come from me.
There are other projects buried in my computer. One half-written screenplay about my childhood. Another half-written screenplay for a mystery love story that my friends would be shocked about how much sex is written into it. Two pitches for magazine articles. A germ of a sitcom idea.
The first week of January found me glued to the TV in my first instance of procrastination for 2018. But it was not ultimately wasted time. I was binge watching a new comedy named "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel," which was so old-fashioned and formulaic but still hilarious. It bowled me over. It made me want to create.
Again.
And was exactly the energy I need to act on my creative resolution.
So, yes. As much as I scoff at those New Year's resolutions, I realize I had one of my own. So I am gleefully no different than anybody else.
Yep, the future is bright. I am opening one of those files right now. After all, it is 2018. The beginning of a new year. And the next act of my life.
Dinner last night: Southwest bacon cheeseburger at the Arclight.
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