TomFlannery.com

It’s that strange time.

The week between Christmas and New Years.

Nobody is quite sure what day it is, or what we’re supposed to be doing. So we stay up late even if we have to get up early, and find reasons to sleep in even if we really should be rising to conquer real-life chores.

Post Christmas depression has set in, but everybody knows that a big party night is days away….along with some more time off. At the very least we’ll get a midweek break, and for many….another entire week to blow off, officially or (to judge by the many office workers online shopping) unofficially.

Nobody really likes being told what to do, so more and more we stay in on New Years Eve and drink beer and eat Doritos on the couch…..a final middle finger to a shitty year that’s been pressuring us to do stuff we really don’t want to do for the last 364 days. Most of us are in the sheets early, watch the stupid ball drop and Jenny McCarthy kiss NYC cops, and are asleep well before the parade of one-hit wonders start bad lip-syncing from the west coast. The new year is coming, and we give can start to give a shit in the morning.

New Years Day used to be a smorgasbord of great college football games, but the playoff system ruined all the old venerable bowl games, so football is relegated to background noise…..like Muzak on an elevator. Laying on the couch with a brutal hangover is a distant memory as well, since it’s hard to get good and drunk when you’re asleep before the local news is over. New Years Day is just another day to lay around and do nothing while contemplating either a shower or joining the gym.

On the whole, 2019 was straightforwardly ass-sucking. Our nation is filled with a very large number of gleefully cruel ignorant vile racist shitheads, which I suppose has always been the case but now they seem to be emboldened gleefully cruel ignorant vile racist shitheads, which kinda makes it worse. Whatever. I try to avoid such people. You should do the same. Make America less shitheady. That would look great on hats.

There are more good people than bad of course….it’s just that the shitheads are always louder so their numbers get amplified. If history is a guide, shitheadism can only be defeated when good people start screaming really loud about shitheads, so maybe 2020 can be the year that silent good people get fed up and start doing things like punching nazis in the face and the like. No more kids in cages. Stop judging the health of the economy on how well rich people are doing. Raise the fucking minimum wage. Such things don’t seem like huge moral leaps of faith to me….so I’m never gonna be totally convinced that we’ve completely jumped the shark as a so-called Christian nation. I think we can yet be saved, especially if we put all the rich white men on a boat and ship the fuckers off to Elba.

What say you? Hand the reins over to the women and children.

And learn how to spell. This needs to become a priority. You know how you learn this? By reading. So the fact that nobody can fucking spell anymore tells you what?

See how these things are all connected?

Shitheads aside, at the beginning of a new year we all sorta wish for the same basic things though. We don’t want a repeat performance of the past year (last year always seemed to be terrible). That would suck. So we ask for good health and not to get whacked from our jobs and to take care of our children and to have a few good friends to drink with and to not get fat. Some good new music wouldn’t hurt either. A few decent books and something bingeable on Netflix. A warm bed and somebody to fill the ice trays. To grow weary at the end of long days without the desperation. We wish for memories that make us smile, not the other kind. And peace. We want peace in our own heads and beds….in our own homes…..in our own corners of the universe….and to project that peace outward, to serve as an antidote to the chaos that so often swirls around us.

There’s only so many of these New Year’s left. There’s way more behind me than there is in front, so putting stuff off makes less and less sense. Make that/those record(s). Write that book. Stage that play. Take a crack at that screenplay. Let the dog sleep in the bed. Stop looking for excuses to tell yourself no, and find the ones that talk you into saying yes. Be the friend you always wanted and half the man your father was.

I want my kids to be safe and secure and well on their way to their own futures.

And I want my regrets to be swallowed up by staying busy doing what I love to do.

In a bit..

–tf