As is usual about this time of the year, folks start setting their sights on the New Year and what they want to do once the Christmas turkey has settled in their bellies and the loll of the holidays have ended.  I’ve started to wargame next year in my head.  There’s a bunch of stuff I want to get done.  And to get it done, I know I need to focus, something which I can be notoriously bad at doing.  I am like a crow or a raven in that instance, shiny new things catch my eye and I abandon whatever I was doing to go see what this shiny new thing is.  That’s good for experiencing loads of things, but not necessarily good for finishing the stuff I start.  So for me, the buzz words for 2012 are FOCUS and in terms of attitude, DETERMINATION.  And the sub-text for 2012 is MSH (Make Shit Happen).

Vlomo is done.  And already I am getting lax with my posting.  I guess that just proves that without a deadline, it’s harder to get things done.  Which I guess is what happens to most people’s dreams.  It’s fun to dream, to fantasize, to “wish shit” as Eminem says.  But to make stuff happen, is a whole other thing.  To make stuff happen requires commitment, dedication, focus and direction.  And, as I think Vlomo has taught me, purpose.  I don’t know how long I’d been saying that I wanted to start video blogging, but until Vlomo provided the purpose, video blogging remained something forever on my to do list, which was really a wish list.  Ah yes, and one other thing I should add to the make stuff happen formula – accountability!  You, my dear readers (or lookers in the case of the video posts), were my accountability element during Vlomo.  When I was late posting, people let me know about.  There were a number of times when I had considered slacking off, but then I had your voices in my head shouting, “GET IT DONE!” So thanks for being my virtual drill sergeants.

“A goal is a dream with a deadline.”

Get it done!

A friend of mine had issues with my ill-defined goals for this year. She called them “gutless.” Here was my reply:

Phew!! You nearly had me. You nearly made me doubt myself and return to the pit – the place that all existentialist know is there. In the pit, you realise that there is nothing, no meaning of life, no meaning to life, no heaven, no hell, no nirvana, nothing. Now there are two ways out of the pit. Either you can’t accept that there is nothing and you fall into despair or you realise that there is nothing and you take the opportunity to create your own meaning in life. Whether that is true or not is still open for debate. I believe it.

In one of our last conversations I said to you that you and I are two sides of the same coin. We are both eternal seekers. That our role in this world is to seek and I know, certainly from my perspective, that I am happiest when I embrace this role. It’s when I try to convince myself otherwise, when I try to force myself to find something else because the seeker’s life never seems to settle and this goes against mainstream society where they would rather we find a nice little consumerist’s box to fit in and do our part to keep the machine ticking. I recently read an argument that says there is no left and right anymore, instead we are divided into consumers and failed consumers. So you better work hard, accumulate money so you can be the perfect consumer.

Anyway, I digress. If you mean by ‘gutless’ that I haven’t taken a stand, that I have not committed myself to anything, then you are half-right. I haven’t commitment myself to anything, apart from being a seeker. I like being a seeker and I like being an adventurer. I like embracing life as it comes. Ok yeah, I set some loose goals to give me a certain orientation and that’s ok by me. Does that mean I will never accomplish anything? Maybe. Will I have enjoyed myself, heck yes. As Jay-Z observes in one of his songs: “nine to five is how you survive, but I don’t want to survive, I want to live it to the limit and love it lot.”

In my mind, I have a clear vision of what I want to do. I want to read a billion books, consume loads of media, and absorb tons of knowledge. A friend of mine asked me last week what do I want to do with all this knowledge. In truth, I want to pursue knowledge for knowledge’s sake. But yeah, ok, I have to earn some coins in order to thrive in this society, so I will have to figure out a way to make the knowledge pay.

I wonder, would my aims have been less ‘gutless’ if I had said:

I want to get a PHD in history and politics
I want to volunteer to be iReporter for CNN
I want to challenge Boing Boing for the number one blog on the Internet
I want to get powerful politicians and some named rich people into my social network
I want to write 20 essays and have them published in the top magazines and literary journals
I want to write a book that addresses the consumer society and why we are all going to burn in Hell
I want to climb the tallest mountain in Europe

(damn!, that’s a good list, isn’t it?)

I have a friend who is a professional speaker and his message is YES if you want to be a success in life, you have to set BIG hairy goals. So by his logic, if I don’t set big hairy goals, then I will not be a success. Is that the same thing you mean by ‘gutless’ goals?

And both of you may be absolute right, my gutless, hairless goals will lead me right down the path of failure.

But here’s the thing, you, me, him, we all end up the same – dead. For me success is being able to answer yes to the following questions:

Did I consciously choose how I wanted to live my life?
Did I embrace life with an adventurous spirit?
Did I love my fellow humans and did I treat them with dignity and respect?
Did I develop myself to my full potential?

Thanks for making me do this. I guess my blog post has done a good job. It bothered you enough to make you think deeper. It made you question me, which made me think deeper. And as a result, I’ve just articulated my four guiding principles.

The holidays are officially winding down now. I say officially because we’ve just spent two and half hours traveling back from Bristol, a trip that normally only takes us about an hour and a half. The M5 was shut from junction 11 to 9. Early reports say the motorway was shut after a man’s body was found on the carriageway near junction 10 just north of Cheltenham. No other details have surfaced yet. It meant we had to take the long way home, but hey, we made it home safely, so no complaints from me.

All in all, we had a great Christmas and New Year break, the in-laws have gone back from whence they came, and we’re back at home settling down to some sense of normalcy. Granted, I have to put up with the kids for another couple of days before they go back to school. But that’s cool, I can cope.

What’s the safety zone for continuing to talk about new year’s resolutions? I usually start thinking about what I want to do with the new year in the last two weeks of December. My theory is if I work it out in December, I can hit January running full speed. Not much is going on in the last couple of weeks in December anyway because most people are too busy thinking about Christmas and racking up hundreds if not thousands of pounds of debt buying gifts for their loved ones and friends. I’m lucky that Ruth is frugal and I waste money all year long thus saving me the need to rack it all up at the end of the year. You don’t notice it as much if you spread it out over the year.

Anyway, if you haven’t made your resolutions or goals for 2011 yet, here are my last words on the subject. All you slackers out there will like this. According to a study conducted for the Department for Work and Pensions, one in six of us is going to live to see our 100th birthday or more. The problem with this, as you can imagine, is that there is simply not going to be enough space for us all. It’ll be like that episode of Star Trek where some alien race captures Kirk and tries to make him mate with their princess, a beautiful blonde of course. It turns out that their planet is suffering from overpopulation because they’ve found a way to eradicate disease and such like, meaning that people simply lived extra long lives, so much so that there wasn’t enough space to even move around anymore. So they wanted Kirk to mate with this princess and give her his germs so that they could all start dying again.

The moral of the story is that if we listen to Jamie Oliver and his ilk and keep getting healthier by all this green, yogurt, granola, broccoli eating living, we’re likely to be begging for population relief in the future. So in defence of the future of our society, I encourage you NOT to make any resolutions about getting fit, quitting smoking, eating more vegetables, and drinking less alcohol. If ever you needed a reason to live hard, eat grease burgers, and lead pies, and drink alcohol like a fish drinks water, this is it – you are helping to secure the future from over population. Any excuse will do eh?

OK, that said, it’s time for me to go do my civic duty and drink shots of Jack Daniels for the rest of the evening.

It’s the New Year, day 1, and I feel worst for wear. I guess drinking a bottle of Glenfiddich with your mate on New Year’s Eve has that effect.

Anyway, it was a good night with good company in the quiet of my mate’s house. We talked a lot of shit about politics, music, and old times. We’re both in our forties, married with multiple kids, mortgages, jobs – the usual stuff of domesticated primates.

Back in the day I would’ve been scouring the neighbourhood looking for a party to crash with evil on my mind – itching to get drunk and get laid. Mostly I just got drunk and passed out. It took me a few years to realise that whiskey and sex have an inverse relationship. The more whiskey you drink, the less likely your chances of getting laid. The whiskey lowered inhibitions but also broke the vital communications link between brain and penis. As I said, I usually just passed out.

I once woke up on New Year’s Day and thought I was dead. I was on the 151 Bacardi Rum back in those days. I was at a house party with my wild-ass army buddies. We were young. We were dumb. And yes, we were full of the white milky stuff. Lots of it. I drank a half of bottle of rum lightly coloured with coke. It didn’t take long before the rum hit me like a hammer and I went from legless to unconscious before the clock struck 12. When I opened my eyes again I was in complete darkness. And I mean there was absolutely no light. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced that kind of dark before, but let me tell you, it’s unnerving, especially when you can’t form a coherent thought or remember how you ended up in the dark. The only conclusion that I could come up with was that I was dead. Panic set in. Holy shit, so that’s it, I thought. Eternal darkness. At least I wasn’t burning in Hell.

It took another 20 minutes before my senses started to return. I realised I was lying on a bed. I worked out that I could move. I stumbled around in the dark until I bumped into a wall. I groped the wall until I found a door. Suddenly I was back in the land of the living. I vowed never to drink that much alcohol ever again. That was 20 years ago. Ooops! Looks like I did it again.

Oh well…

It’s a New Year. Time for new things, new adventures, new goals. But first I need to find a greasy spoon joint to clear up this hangover. I have a taste for steak. A bloody piece of meat is always good for bringing me back to my senses. The blood awakens the natural man in me. It’s a primal thing, you understand.

I’m in Bristol, so a greasy spoon joint is not hard to find. At the next round about, I see just the place. I screech into the carpark, hungry and full of hate.

It’s not long before I’m seated and my waitress, Gemma, mid-thirties, short black hair, cute smile, hands me a menu and takes my drink order.

She returns with my pint of diet coke. She must have sensed my desperation. Instead asking for my order, she recommends the rack of ribs. There’s something savage about eating a rack of ribs. You have to hold them in your hands and tear into them viciously, like a lion into a gazelle.

Hunger satisfied, I turn my attention to figuring out what I loosely want to do in 2011. This is what I came up with:

Read more history and politics
Stay current on world affairs
Blog daily (which equates to write daily)
Build my social network (on and off line)
Write more essays
Write another book
More adventure
More travel
Create content
Create useful products to sell
Make documentary short films focused on telling people’s story
Stay fit

I know I’ll have to sit down with these and figure out the details, but at least this gives me a direction of travel.

I signal to Gemma that I’m ready for the cheque. While we’re waiting for the card machine to give the ok, I ask Gemma what her goals are for the new year.

“I want to fall in love, run a 5K, find a job I enjoy and see new places.”

Sounds like a plan to me.

What are you must desirous of?  Put another way, what is it that you want most?  Now ask yourself how much do you really want it?  Here’s a story about Socrates that may help you clarify how much you want it.

A young man asked Socrates how he could get wisdom.

Socrates replied: “Come with me.”  He took the young man to a nearby river and shoved his head under the water.  He held it there until the boy struggled for air, then he let him go.

The boy took a moment to compose himself.  Socrates then asked the boy:  “What did you desire most when your head was underwater?”

“I wanted air,” replied the boy.

Socrates nodded:  “When you want wisdom as much as you wanted air when you were immersed in the water, you will receive wisdom.”

In the same way, when you want what you say you want most as much as you want air to breathe, then you will get the thing you desire.

Rock on Socrates.