Apologies for 2019

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I have no idea why the windshield of my car is so dirty. Every time I stop for gas I use the little squeegee to wipe down the outside, but every morning when I wake up before 5 and start up my car to drive to yoga, I can’t see a damn thing out the front of my car.

This issue, like many others that arise in my life, I have learned to accept rather than taking the time to fix. I once shared an apartment in Boston where the smoke alarm would beep every thirty seconds. I didn’t even notice it until my dad stayed with me for an evening and couldn’t sleep. I guess I just sort of acclimated to it. In a similar fashion, I didn’t really realize how much of a problem this front windshield had become until a friend borrowed my car and commented on it. Kind of funny how you have to step out of your day to day before you actually realize that something is wrong.

For the past three or four years, I take the month of January to dry out.

This means no booze, smoking or any of the other fun stuff that you might find out and about in Los Angeles. This year I added coffee to the equation as well. I’ve noticed that at the end of this quick stretch of sobriety I do feel better. My body operates a little more optimally and I eat more regularly. I don’t, however, feel so good that I want to take this on as my new day to day fashion. 

If nothing else, taking a break from all of the extra noise lets me see a little bit more clearly. I notice the times that I am drawn to these vices and how sometimes it’s more of a habit or reaction than something that I actually want to participate in. I wind up with a lot more time on the weekends to decide what it is that I actually want to do rather than just rolling along and grabbing a couple drinks on Friday because it’s Friday and it seems like that’s what everybody else is doing.

Last year during my January sobriety I noticed that my relationship had fallen apart, and I made moves to clear myself of it. I’m not saying that the stimulants and depressants that I’ve used are to blame for situations I’ve found myself in. I’m merely saying that when you start to remove some of the regular and habitual things from your life, it’s interesting to see what fades away and what remains.

At the start of 2020 my reflections have led me to think that I may have some explaining to do for the previous year. Maybe I’m being too hard on myself or maybe I’m doing what they call ‘spiritual bypassing’ and using calm thought out reflections to make a sinner look like he’s showing some remorse for his actions. Afterall, the devil can justify his deeds. It’s really impossible to say from my perspective and I’m sure that there are people who read this that will scoff at my feigned remorse while others will applaud me for doing the work.

All I can do is hope that I’m being honest with myself.

Last year began with a huge shake up in my regular life, pulling a lot of the stability of my day to day out from under me. I played a significant role in this destabilizing. I wound up moving in and out of four different apartments over the course of the calendar year, each time convincing myself that this was the right move for various reasons and that now I could finally sit down and start over from the ground up. Each time leaving a roommate with a vacancy in their home. At the end of the day, you have to do what is best for yourself and it serves no purpose for you to play small, but it’s also worth acknowledging the position in which you left the people you care about. We are all integral parts of this universe and every single action we take, good, bad or indifferent, has drastic effects on the world around us.

I also became single for the first time in almost a year. Dating in LA, as I assume for most anywhere, is interesting. I felt like I approached this new aspect of my life as honestly and open as I could. When I met someone new I would immediately communicate where I was at in terms of not being fully ready for something big, open to polyamory and non-monogamous relationships, and interested in exploring what the dating pool had to offer. Some partners were immediately turned off by this. Which is fine. Everyone has to draw their own boundaries of what is acceptable in their lives. Some were fascinated and wanted to dive deeper. Which was great. But in my experience over the past year, it does seem like those of us who play with our sexuality in the thoughts of exploration seem to be avoiding something that we fear. That of course does not apply to everyone, but in a lot of ways I think that it certainly applied to me. Like I was trying to prove something to someone who was no longer listening anyway.  And even though I feel like I was up front with everyone that I met in this time about where I was and what I was looking for, there are still those that I’ve hurt and that doesn’t feel good.

It doesn’t feel like that’s the person I want to see in the mirror.

My practice fell off during the year as well. That’s a little hard to admit, but I feel that it’s more important to tell you about a failure than a success. Last year I started a book called 365 Tao. It’s a small book with quick little poems and then a write up for each and every day of the calendar year. I would read it before my meditations in the morning. Today is January 20th and I am at page 347. So I missed a few. Someone who writes about their meditations and yoga practice in an attempt to inspire people to live as a better version of themselves should be more consistent and set a better example. But I’m not a better human than you are. I’m just another human. A human who makes human mistakes.

My mistakes and subsequent reflections remind me of the Netflix show BoJack Horseman. In the adult cartoon, the protagonist, BoJack, is a washed up actor with a ton of money, little to no drive and an affinity for anything that could possibly mess up his life. He consistently screws over the people that he claims as friends. In one episode he does such a thing to his friend, Todd, and begins to make his monologue of an apology before Todd cuts him off sharply with the following hard truth, “You can’t keep doing this. You can’t keep doing shitty things and then feel bad about yourself like that makes it okay. You need to be better.”

So writing this article is great. It’s a good opportunity for me to sit and reflect on what I did well and what could use some work. It’s a brand new year and I really hope that I can be better. I hope that I can show up in ways that don’t make me shake my head when I catch my reflection in the morning. But I hope that next year I’m not writing the same article. I hope in 2021 I’m not still doing the things that I claim to be sorry for. I hope this is open and honest reflection rather than narcissistic bullshit to make you believe that I’m being vulnerable and trying my best. 

I hope by next year I will be better……. Or will have at least figured out how to clean the inside of my windshield. 

That’s just something that I’ve been sitting with...

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