I received some troubling news in the mail today, friends. It seems that my eye doctor’s office is closing. Finding a new one shouldn’t be particularly difficult and it will be nice to no longer have to drive 45 minutes for an appointment, but what makes this significant is that I’d been going to the same place since fist being diagnosed as “blind as a bat” at twelve years old. There is no need to do the math, but that was a very long time ago.
I’ve been using the same bank nearly as long even though the closest branch to where I now live is a 30-minute drive. This year will mark 28 years at my place of employment, three of my five best friends I’ve known since I was in elementary school and my favorite shirt was bought at an Aerosmith / Black Crowes concert in 1994.
Does this all make me amazingly loyal, a bit weird, or just resistant to change? All three?
I’m a creature of habit, and the truth is that they aren’t all good ones.
I used to mock New Year’s resolutions as a habit-changing method, felt that if there was something about oneself that needed to be changed that process should start at the moment of realization, not when a page on a calendar was turned. It’s an easy philosophy to follow if you’re an arrogant prick that doesn’t think that there is much about yourself that needs improving.
How much less of that arrogant prick I am today is probably open to interpretation but I’m willing to concede that there are things I’d like to be different, many of them the same things I would have said at this time last year, unfortunately.
I need to do a better job keeping in touch with those friends I was talking about, need to surround myself with good people more often. I should spend more time reading and less time either watching sports or people on television talking about sports. I’m up to two trips to the gym a week but should double that considering I still smoke, drink more than I should and eat like crap. Should probably do something about that stuff as well. There’s a lot more.
Will I actually accomplish any of this? Hell, I don’t know. I know that identifying room for improvement is a good place to start and maybe that’s what resolutions are all about. Change is hard, scary even sometimes, but it is always that first step that is the hardest. Life is a journey and the road to self-improvement one that never ends but it also never starts until that step is taken.
I’m a slightly better person than I was a year ago. I don’t know if I’ll be able to say any more than that 365 days from now, but I’m moving forward.
It’s a start.
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Previously Published on Thirsty Daddy
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