Obligatory year-end wrap-up

I just scrolled down the blog and found last year's December 31st post... it couldn't get any worse, right? Right?

Wow, how optimistic and excited we all were about 2010 in the hours leading up to New Years Eve dinner... and how HORRIBLE the night turned out after that. We waited literally for hours after our reservation to be seated to dinner, and in the meantime had to endure the crush of New Years Eve bar mobs. When we were finally seated at 11:30pm, the service was attrocious and I believe we were finally served food after midnight (the kitchen staff were pressed into service for additional time). It was amazing foreshadowing of 2010... gritting teeth trying to hold back supremely self-righteous anger.

2010 will join 2009 on the reject page, at least for awhile. Some great things did happen--I got my professional license, I got to fall in love, I got to be a part of important groups with significant connections... The roots are pushing through the pine straw and thin gravel to find the soil. It's sad that my brain can take those amazing things and just bury them. That's Psychology 101, though--people feel loss more severely than gain. I am people. I just tend to dwell on stuff much longer than most. Every injustice is a personal trauma. Every wrong must be righted.

2011, be good to me and I'll be good to you. Don't be like your older siblings and I won't roll my eyes at you when I see you on the gas pump. Let me tell my grandkids how 2011 was the watershed year that stopped this hideous decade--The Shitties--in its tracks. The economy grew! Unemployment sank! Wars concluded! The check engine light turned off by itself! We all fell in love and it was a GOOD thing! Someone invented a calorie-free Krispe Kreme donut! Be THAT year, 2011--be cool, and I'll catch up with you and be cool too. Mmmkay?

Who am I? Why am I here?

Poor Admiral Stockdale. At his debut vice presidential debate opening in 1992, he said those seven words that, the following morning, would be used as evidence of his senility. Little did he know that 18 years later, his geriatric croak would resonate in my head during every drought of confidence--"who am I? why am I here?"

I've heard people say that you are who you are. Your personality is as much a part of your being as your brown eyes or your hairy chest. Sure, you can always wear colored contacts or wax your chest, but in the end, you're just a brown-eyed person with colored contacts or a hairy person who's been harvested and is waiting for the new crop to grow in. And so with your personality; changes are either pharmacologically-inspired or based on good acting skills. You are who you are.

So what happens if I don't like who I am? Physically, a person can go so far as to change their sex, but are they ever anything more than a post-op transgender? Does anyone really believe that, beneath her many layers of facial plastic, Joan Rivers is ACTUALLY good looking (or for that matter, above her many layers of facial plastic?). So if I'm profoundly unsatisfied with my personality and emotional outlook, am I stuck? I may find a pill that makes me awesome, or I may be able to project an air of awesomeness. In the end, am I just a "modified" unawesome person?

My Lost Autumn of 2010 has gotten me to reflect on who I am, which is all the more difficult because I've been on psychological medications since... high school? Without my meds and strong desire to win people's affections, I can only imagine the pile of couch-sprawling spasmodic goo I would be right now--is that me? Is that the unadulterated Paul Lipchak? Is that the are that I are? Have my achievements, successes, relationships, and fuck-ups over the past 15 years been some sort of artificial affectation fueled by body chemicals reacting with out-of-body chemicals in an environment of high social pressure?

There are things I want to change about my personality. Things that are obstacles to happiness, success, satisfaction... I want to be more easy-going. I want to have more self-confidence. Be riskier. More spontaneous. I want to be less intense. Less cynical. Less shy. Content. Fulfilled. Grateful. Charitable. For real. Not post-op happy. Real happy.

Is it too late to become who I want to be?