It was the year that never wanted to end. The year that saw me through three different positions in as many brands, two different cities to call home, two different states to call home, one cross country move, a shitty election, a lot of tears spread over 365 days, and one absolute meltdown in the middle of it all. Leading me to label 2016 as "Sean's Year for an Existential Crisis."
For those of you who have heard the term and never knew what it meant, allow me to illuminate the subject:
Existential Crisis; a moment at which an individual questions the very foundations of their life; whether this life has any meaning, purpose or value.
That was me in May, when I had my meltdown at a Starbucks in Austin and rushed to buy a $600 plane ticket home so I could see my family and friends and chill the fuck out (read about it here). Was it a rash decision? Sure it was. Did it help me in the long run? Indeed it did! It's a tough pill to swallow when you have the best year of your life (2012 at 26 years old), and then realize four years later you have no idea how you did it. How did you get happy, how did you make your choices, how How HOW? I kept wondering how I was going to capture lightning in a bottle for a second time, never realizing that to do so was impossible. That instead of bending my life around circumstances and trying to figure it out in the process, I needed to break it.
I left the job I'd been planning on for years, left the city I'd been planning on moving to for years, threw caution to the wind and took a chance. When things get as bad as they were, and without wanting to go on medication to make myself feel better, I figured it couldn't get any worse. And y'know what, for trusting my gut, I was right. Because it didn't get any worse, and it in fact got a whole lot better.
I went into this year all wrong, planning originally on filming the whole thing (thank god I gave up on that one almost immediately!) in order to make myself feel something again. It's interesting in that I look at the pictures my friends from West Elm post on Facebook and Instagram and I feel a strange nostalgia for the city. Perhaps I really didn't give it enough of a shot. Not that I'd ever move back, because I won't, and go ahead and punch me right in the nose if I ever forget how much I hated the humidity and always feeling sticky. But my friends down there do still enjoy it, and they thrive in it, and it makes me so happy to see that. It's what prompted me to develop my resolution for this year, one that I can hopefully stick to but one that doesn't necessarily come with the physical gratification of those in the past (documenting a year of my life, moving out on my own, yadda yadda).
My 2017 New Years Resolution bucks the trend, and because of it I am going to label 2017 as my year of "Turning Around". What does that mean? Well I'm glad you asked! Step into my office that kinda smells like a dirty cat litter box (guess it's time to change the litter (I'm being serious)) and I shall show you!
I spent too long trying to bend my life around the events I felt I couldn't control. Asshole employees ruining your first attempt at being a General Manager? Might as well ignore them and hope they stop. Not making enough money? Better start spending less to compensate. Hate where you live? Just wait until the next season of weather, it'll get better. Hating where you thought you wanted to work? Well, you wanted it, so suck it up and ride it out.
These things thrust themselves into my life and I've become so used to just dealing with them. Spinning them in positive directions, acting like I am my own PR agent and trying to prove to everyone that "hey, this is just as good as I said it'd be! Not HOW I said it would be, but just as good!"
So screw it.
If wisdom comes with age and I'm now another year older and maybe another year wiser, it's time to stop tolerating the things that don't make me happy. It's time to stop shoveling shit and hoping for the best. It's time to take the reins and start turning it all around.
It's time to work hard and prove my worth. It's time to laugh in the face of horrible ailments in people I love, to coach and develop my team into what I need rather than what keeps the drama quiet. To not just skip over the things that make me angry but to push back when I'm getting shoved. I've built a career around being the nice guy that apologizes when I've done nothing wrong, sometimes to the point that it's simply embarrassing. And this resolution is not to say "Watch out, bitch breath is coming!" and it's not to say "I'm a millennial, 'bout time I started acting like one!"
This resolution is to say if I don't like something, it's perfectly acceptable to change it. If it makes me sad, laugh at it. If it makes me angry, work through it. I need to start speaking my mind, to stop fearing the consequences of the thoughts I have running through me all the time, and to just enjoy things. To enjoy the people and places and things that I surround myself with and that I want to be a part of. Feeling unhealthy? Get fit. Feeling fat? Workout. Life is too short to not make myself happy with sometimes the simplest things that can do so.
For 2017, instead of saying I'll lose weight or record the year or move yet again or any number of things, I'm going to say I am just going to be happy, and work at being happy, and strive to be happy. And y'know what? Maybe in 365 I'll have a whole new story to tell.
Until then, toodles gang (c;
