New Year's Eve is a night of celebration. Of frivolity. Of rebirth. It's a time to get rid of the grime and garbage of the previous 365 days (366 in leap years). It's no longer for me. It's not that I don't care about the holiday, I like being hungover on the couch as much as the next guy, I just have gotten over it.
2016 was a shit year. By almost every account, it was terrible. Know what the first thing I did in 2016 was? I had a panic attack. At 12:30 AM, at the bar, in the middle of a crowd of people, 75% of which I knew, I had a massive panic attack and had to flee. Luckily I lived close enough where I could just walk home and be quiet for a while.
The rest of the year wasn't much better. Through jobs, splits, moving, anxiety, depression, a breakdown of my self confidence, this year was the worst. 2016 can suck it.
So, after reflecting on the last year, okay, decade, I realized that I have to change the narrative of my life. To start this, I am not going to the bar this New Year's Eve. It's a young man's game out there on that night. I don't need to deal with that shit anymore.
I don't need that social merit badge. I've earned it a dozen times over, and every time, it's more and more difficult to navigate. I don't have to prove myself anymore to you people, and frankly, I don't want to. I don't want to fight through a crowd to take a piss because I know a bunch of people in the same place.
Speaking of a bunch of people being in the same place, fuck going to bars on nights like this one. I don't want to stand four people deep in front of a bar with a stressed out bartender frantically running around pouring drinks to the zombies groaning and reaching for nourishment.
If I wanted to go to a bar, which I don't, that would require a certain amount of pregaming. I don't want to drink until I'm almost drunk, then drive to the bar, finish the job, and drive home at 3 in the morning. That, my friends, is a recipe for danger. I don't want to have to deal with the police in that situation, and I don't trust other people's driving enough to feel safe on a cold night with a drunken mafia blasting around the streets. Fuck that noise.
In light of all the grumpy old man-ness that my life has devolved into, I'm staying in this year. I just don't see the allure in doing the same things that I have done so many damn times with the same results. Especially when the ensuing 364 days (365 in leap years) haven't gone that well.
So I'm going to change it up. I'm going to stay in, or if I do go somewhere, it'll be somewhere quiet, safe, and without a goddamn bartender fucking up a beer order. Also, if I really want a dance party, my neighbors play REALLY bad music at absurd levels at all times, so I can just live for a while and I'll be subjected to pulsing beats and trite laser sounds over the top of said beats.
2017 is going to be a year in which we are going to be responsible for cleaning up the mess that 2016 was and trying to better ourselves despite of that mess. So I'm going to change it up. Start by doing something different this year.
Like I said, I don't need to prove myself to you people.
SD
