Watched pots

I hate New Year’s Resolutions. My association of the term equals broken promises that you make to yourself. I have met enough people in my life that have not kept their word that I certainly don’t need to break a promise to myself. There have been enough people that have done a good job on that without my help.

I’m certain that there are people that have made major life changes through New Year’s Resolutions, but in my own experiences and the examples I’ve witnessed in others, they die off before Valentine’s Day. For this reason, I’ve been hesitant to set resolutions for myself.
Last year, I broke this approach to the New Year, and I set two resolutions for myself: in 2009, I was to write an encouraging note to one friend a week and write a blog entry once a week. Simple as they were, I successfully broke them both. Clearly, as my last entry was back in July, that resolution was suffocated by apathy. And with 52 notes that were to be written throughout last year, zero were ever composed.

Whether a self-fulfilled prophecy or not, I broke the resolutions I made to myself, deepened my belief that they are dangerous goals to establish, and found another method to disappoint myself.
Yet, with that said, at the start of this New Year, this new decade, I look ahead and wonder what I can change—about myself and the world I live in. I’d be lying if I didn’t have some ideas and some hope about the future. Sure, that “encouraging note” idea might make a come back for 2010… and the writing thing is always something I want to do more of, but, like most men I know, I’m hesitant to make an actual commitment again.

Instead, this year, there’s only one thing I really aim towards. It may be impossible and in all truthfulness, it goes against how I’m wired, but I think after three and a half decades, I’m ready to venture in a slightly different direction. The time has come for me to stop watching pots because the saying is true: they never boil.

I’ve spent so much of my life waiting. And, for a person as impatient as I am, that’s a surprising revelation, but I’ve come realize how true it is. I waited to drink alcohol until I was 27 when I realized that there is nothing wrong with a cosmo or two. I waited to do theatre until I was 28 when I realized I was cutting off a major passion and joy in my life without it. I waited for God to heal me of my homosexuality until I realized that is not something to be fixed. I waited to come out and accept the man God created me to be until I realized that I was living a ghost-like life, unable to truly move or feel anything.

In all that, I’m positive there is a plan involved. For whatever reasons there may be, some clear now and others not, I have been a perpetual late bloomer by design.

But, with such a long resume in waiting, I’ve allowed myself to continue that in other ways today—with a specialization in waiting for guys. Waiting for them to call. Waiting for them to email. Waiting for them to come over and say hello. They just become more pots I watch—and as hot as they may be, they never boil. They don’t call. They don’t email. They don’t come over and say hello. And, if they do, before long, they stop. So, I’m done waiting for things that won’t happen.

In 2010, I want that to change, and through some sort of slow breakthrough, I can see that I can make that change.

I’m not sure why it is *this* year that I can see this strength I have. Maybe it’s because the ‘00s didn’t seem futuristic enough. Maybe now saying ‘twenty-ten’ sets some sort of tone that flying cars and housemaid robots are around the corner, and it puts into perspective that the man I want to be has some catching up to do. Maybe just enough time and experience have come and gone that I’m a bit wiser.

“They” say: it happens when you aren’t looking. To that, I respond: Gee, thanks-- If I want advice that helpful, I’ll watch Dr. Phil. If I’m not looking, I’m doing it on purpose so that it *will* happen, so for all intensive purposes, I’m still looking. And, with my life-long desire for something more, I can’t very well see the capability within myself to act nonchalant about love. I don’t mind going on record by saying that I’ve not only wanted love my whole life, but I have full confidence in my ability to be amazing when finally in it.

“They” (was it “mama”?) also say: You can’t hurry love; you just have to wait. In this case, “they” (or “mama”) is right. There’s nothing we can do. We *do* just have to wait… and that’s part of the beauty of it, I suppose. The way it can sneak up on you. The way it can surprise you. They way it can change your world in a day. It adds to the magic.

It’s just now, this year, and hopefully in those that follow, I’m not going to watch the ‘love’ pot anymore; it doesn’t boil that way. I’ll still wait and hope (fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly), but I’m not going to be waiting, hoping and watching anymore. For me to remember not to watch it, I might need some distractions (perhaps in the form of encouraging notes or blog entries); but in 2010, the watch ends.

The pot can boil or not. Either way, life goes on. Not because you want it to, but because it just has to.