New beats, repeats, endings and beginnings--

So it's New Year's Eve, and I just went on facebook and friended a guy I met last night who I really wanted to get to know. Today and yesterday I looked at a handful of choices for food and chose vegan ones. Last night and the night before I was up until about two in the morning with friends... but that's less to the point, I guess.

Look, my point is this. It's a new year. I don't believe in living by the arbitrary lines of a calendar, but it's a new year, all the same. By the end of this year, I will be full-on vegan. I will be in college, one way or another. I will have finished at least one novel, and will be writing every single day, outside of college stuff. I will be able to sing and play guitar, and well. That's just... what's going to happen. Will I be happy? That remains to be seen. But I'm not going to sit around and let life just happen around me anymore.

2010 will be a year of grace, mercy, forgiveness; 2010 will be a year of faith, of confidence and spirituality; 2010 will be the year I stop existing and start living.

An Open Letter: it needed to be said (true or not).

look, i'm never going to live up to your expectations. i'm sorry, really and truly i am, because i want to, so much. i want to be fucking perfect, and i'm never going to be and it's not worth your time to keep trying like this. it's just... not. give the fuck up. i'm sorry. i wish you had someone worthy of caring to hang out with, someone who you could teach and help and someone who would actually listen and work hard to fulfill dreams and someone with as much drive as potential. and i know it's a cop-out. everything i've said, everything i've written, every thought i've had for the past two years has been a cop-out, a reason why i can't, or think i can't. and i'm so, so sorry, because i let you down and let you down and let you down, and then i turn around and get upset when you're human, too. i expect my friends to be superhuman somehow, even though i'm the biggest fuckup in the tri-state area. and then... just... i don't know what. I'M FUCKING SORRY. and that's not good enough, it never will be, what i need to do is get off my ass and fix the mistakes, make it better, live up to the very least of my potential and i'm so sorry, because it doesn't look like i ever will. i can't even promise you i'll try, because i know i'll fall apart again when depression kicks in and this little spurt of motivation and inspiration goes away. you deserve better friends than i could be... a better friend, i guess? but plural. anyway. i'm sorry. i guess there's no way to end this thing without a... resolution, of some kind. so i will try. i honestly will try to be better, and i will listen to what you're saying and heed it, and not fuck up so much. that's what i want to do. listen, heed, follow-- all the other stuff is just what i'll work on in the meantime. but i want to be a better friend, someone who's reliable and not... shitty to be around. so yeah. i'll fix it. i can't promise you i'll ever be as good as any one of my friends deserves, but i'll get better. coyote or not, i can be a better human.

It made sense in my head.

Good grief, is it really necessary to psycho-analyze every damn quirk in this twisted little brain? Because it's getting annoying. And a little disturbing. Things don't look right when you look at them closely.

I know I have some weird kind of approval complex. It probably, if I look for the most sensible (if Freudian) reason, is because:
-growing up with the idea of striving for unattainable perfection as the only way to live
-a lack of obvious pride/support of any kind from my father, for the most part
-a deep feeling of self-loathing, traceable to any number of sources
-impossible standards because... ? that one doesn't trace either...

Baaaasically, when there's someone I respect, I go way the hell out of my way to be... whatever the hell my brain has decided I'm supposed to be. And then when I (predictably) fail in the juiced-to-the-maxcore insane standards I've set for myself in that ...role, or whatever you want to call it, I go apeshit on my own brain, and go into full-on self-loathing/abuse/destructive mode. It's kind of a bad thing. I'm getting better at managing it (read: I'm getting better at hiding the evidence and shoving it the hell out of my conscious mind), but it's obviously been very blatant in the past, because it's led certain friends/bosses to be wary of telling me I've screwed up, because they're afraid FOR SOME STRANGE REASON that I'll take it way too hard and OH MY GOODNESS beat up on myself about it. Sigh. Which leads me, or at least my more rational parts, to be all "What is this about? Tell me what I screwed up, so I can... not screw it up next time! It is not a hard concept my friend! I am not a fragile butterfly! I am Coyote and my medicine is stronger than yours! and I can -take- it!" The bit I don't mention, often even to myself, is that I will feel like shit about it, but the honest truth is that if you don't give me a reason to feel like shit? MY BRAIN WILL MAKE ONE UP. I'd rather beat myself up about something that actually happened, which will lead to actual self-improvement in the long term (Don't argue, it will), than to beat myself up about things that aren't even real, and wind up depressed over nothing. t'ain't worth it.

Anyway, it leads to situations like this.
Me: *screws something up*
Other Person: Dude! What the fuck?
Me: Ohshitohshitohshit!
Other Person: ...relax, no big deal.
(some time past)
Me: *screws something up*
Other Person: *makes some odd and vaguely disparaging joke about it*
(rinse and repeat for about three hours)
Exit Other Person
Me: *angrygrumblemutter* Jerkfacealwaysalldownonmeyowhatthefuck*
Subconscious: Except that, hey, cares about you, right? Wants you to be a better person? Only has good intentions and would never jerk you around for no reason?
Me: *grumblemutter* Yeah, but knows I take shit too seriously.
Second-conscious: Except that you keep saying all "I'm not a fragile butterfly, I can take it, stop treating me like a puppy or something," so you have nothing to complain about. Either face up to the fact that you are apparently too thin-skinned to handle even the most gentle, joking of criticisms, or stop fucking whining about it and fix your fucking mistakes so there's no problem.

Of course, if I hadn't been such an idiot this morning, early morning, most of this could've been avoided.

Fuckin' coyotes. We never know when to quit.

Besides, the music made everything worth it, and I mean Everything.