Intention Retention: (R)Evolutionary Resolve
I gave up New Year’s resolutions years ago. They were not working and the pervasive cynicism surrounding the custom was getting to me. If no one around here is interested in improving their play; why should we keep calling it a game?
If I was going to quit the resolution game; I mind as well go out on top. My final New Year’s resolution was quite successful; For 2017, I was resolved for more Benatar. I was all fired up; hitting with my best shot; standing, heartache to heartache; running with the shadows of the night, breaking hearts, and most of all belonging anywhere and anywhere my wayward wherefores took me from that point. Who couldn’t benefit from more Benatar? A question as timeless as it is rhetorical.
I was so successful in my resolve for more Benatar, in fact, my resolution evolved into intention. It was about this time when there was a highly visible increase in feminist demonstrations coinciding with the inauguration of the 45th POTUS. I saw the world needed not only more Benatar. But needed the voices of women be heard; particularly those voices who’d been ignored and forgotten for way too many years. The voices of female pop vocalists of the 70’s and 80’s. My resolve for more Benatar evolved into my intention to reclaim the voices of the forgotten female pop vocalists of the 70’s and 80’s.
And so the You Go, Girl Playlist was born. My most successful playlist of all time; at least according to Ben Davis, whose opinion I hold higher than most. 7 hours and 18 minutes of bangers; one song per artist, every dimension of the human heart space explored by sirens and their muses for the elevation of humanity.
That summer I reached the lowest point of my life and over the next couple months I realized I had to quit drinking and resolved to do so on Christmas night of that year. I wasn’t going to mess around with a New Year’s resolution; not when I know this was life or death; not after Benatar.
There was no resolution just the intention to succeed no matter what it took. It took a lot of marijuana and gummy bears at first. I think I strapped on 30 pounds. But I did it.
Then as the years came to a close I was very keen to self reflection. Loving the time when our lives has some concrete temporal finity to think of what went right; what went wrong; and what could be better. While I grasped the ineptitude of a resolution I hadn’t yet discovered the power of an intention.
Years later I reached another impasse in my journey to self-discovery. I was, as usual, overcommitting myself around the holiday’s; spending too much time, money, and energy trying to make everyone else happy; leaving myself with scant remains of the aforementioned to find happiness for myself. So my first and last New Years Intention was born in 2020: Don’t spread myself so thin. It has been all blue skies and green pastures since then.
Don’t spill your candy in the lobby and save a little popcorn for the third act.. Get some rest and do it again. My intention hasn’t changed yet it has evolved into something different with every passing moment as self-reflection remains constant. Every day a rebirth no matter what day it is.
—
“You can do a lot in a lifetime
If you don't burn out too fast
You can make the most of the distance
First you need endurance
First you've got to last”
— Neal Peart, “Marathon”
