New Year, New Me?

I’ve been a passive Twitter user for years. I mostly lurk and get my news from that platform. This past week I’ve been seeing lots of New Year, new me declarations. I find it curious, I’ll rant on that more later. For now I should address the big absence elephant in the room. I’ve been away for months! My new job was a big challenge this fall and it took up most of my attention. There was a lot more travel and much more effort expended during evenings and weekends so that I didn’t have time to do my regular fooling around. Since I didn’t have time for that, then the time that I would I usually try to conjure up something to say to the abyss, I had to use for my regular fooling around. I came home early from Christmas and was finally able to let loose and really just get some downtime, some serious downtime. All I worried about was eating twice a day and not pissing on the floor. It was fantastic. I thought about it for awhile on my long drive back and realized that I was missing my escape from reality. I don’t get hammered by myself, it would violate my rule of not drinking alone, and I don’t use drugs so sitting in front of a screen is my main method of turning off my brain. Even during sleep I have dreams of work. When I started this site over a half a decade ago, one of my biggest fears at that time was get consumed by my job. I was able to quickly learn how to uncouple my job from my identity but still feared it would eat me. I didn’t want all my friends and associates to be professionally based, I wanted people that only know me for me. I have been coming dangerously close to leaving those people behind in the last year I as I focused on being successful in my new job. So for me, it won’t be New Year, new me, it will be the old me, I want to get back to my roots. I’m glad that I’ve almost completed a full cycle in my new position, after two cycles I should have a comfort level that will make everything feel easier. This has happened in my previous roles. In the interim, I’ll have to be conscious of how I spend my time and ensure that I make time to continue my non-professional relationships. This is a more logical viewpoint, the turning of the calendar doesn’t make you a different person and the start of a new year is just this side of arbitrary for a time to make sweeping life changes. A birthday is more logical. I’ll be back later to continue my nonsense.