Ten Thorny New Year's Questions

1. How many times do you need to be bludgeoned over the head with the fact that you're not good enough, not as good as you could be, or some combination of the two?

2. Are you sick yet of taking a truncheon to your own head and calling it self-reflection?

3. What's wrong with the illusion of satisfaction, if the only alternative is the reality of despair? No, really, what's wrong with that?

4. How much of a bad thing is enough?

5. Why isn't your suffering as good as everyone else's? Will it ever be? Why is it so obvious that that matters?

6. Why in the world is anything expected of you? Who are you to think you are the sort of person things can safely be expected of?

7. Why can't you write whatever you want to write, whatever poems or essays or diary-entries or novels or screenplays you please, and have that be good enough? Why must you be made to feel guilty every time you engage in the act of communication? Is it because there is no form of communication good enough for anyone who isn't the communicator?

8. What's going on?

9. Do you deserve it? Which parts?

10. Aren't you sick of being talked at? Isn't anger both inevitable and deadly? What isn't fear in all this? Are you going to be able to carve something out here, or not? Why is it that all the things that matter are the things you can't control, and all the things which mean fuck-all can be amended, upgraded, prioritized, analyzed, "owned", cast off, bought for half-price, believed (or not), and internalized at the click of a button?

11 (BONUS): Why isn't it your turn to be miserable this year?

Please don't answer these questions. If you think you can, you can't, not because you're fooling yourself, but because we all are. Just be happy there's still a chance for you to be completely alone on New Year's. It's not too late to make that resolution.