Beginning in an Ending

I'm sitting in my car right now waiting for my assistant manager to get here so we can open the store. She's fifteen minutes late. Against Me!'s "Beginning in an Ending" is playing in my car right now. The line "in your arms, I don't know who I am" always gets me. I know exactly what Tom Gabel means. None of this has anything to do with the point of the blog.

In just nine days I'll be twenty-four. And like Kiefer Sutherland, I'm looking at twenty-four as my shot at redemption and a chance to show what I got.

(Did I just make a "24" reference? Wow.)

I spent most of my twenty-third year trying to figure out what I wanted and who I was, and the year before basically questioning anything and everything about myself that I could possibly question. Call it a quarter-life crisis if you must.

Twenty-three was a weird year. I mean, it's probably never a good sign when you start the year out by vomiting your insides out in a Mandalay Bay hotel room. I had a lot of things work against me (not Against Me!) and had to deal with a lot of not-so-fun things head on. I made a lot of mistakes and paid the price for most. But around the midway point I started piecing everything together. And I can honestly say that I've found my comfort zone. That's a huge deal.

Look, we all have that desire to be someone or something that we're not. We're jealous, needy creatures by nature. We see others and want what we don't/can't have. Someone has a cooler car or nicer clothes or a newer phone or a better ass or whatever, and we become envious. But, to quote Brian Fallon, "what you don't have, you don't need it." And ain't that the truth. I mean, sure it would probably be sweet to be Ryan Reynolds or that Team Jacob guy who has Jesus' abs and Justin Beiber's face, but at the end of the day I like being myself. Maybe I don't wake up next to Scarlet Johansson, but... wait, that's a bad example. You guys get what I'm sayin'.

All jokes aside, that's a big deal to me. It's been a couple years since I've felt comfortable in my own skin. And its been quite some time since I've focused mainly on myself and not others. To be honest, it's been really nice being a little selfish. But back to that comfort level. I feel as if I have it in me to achieve what I can and want to.

I'm never one for New Years resolutions. But for my twenty-fourth year, I'm setting myself some goals. To continue writing for the college paper. To get in better shape. To re-visit vegetarianism. To continue (actually) working on a book/screenplay. To continue my vinyl collecting. To learn a different language. To save money so next Summer I can travel across the United States. To learn to communicate better. And most importantly, to continue to realize that life has it's up's and down's, and to not get too high with the up's and too down with the low's.

Ladies and gentlemen; this is my year for sure.