The Reset Button

When the ball drops tonight at midnight, and glasses are clinking and friends and family are wishing you a Happy New Year, I’m confident that I will be fast asleep.  Believe me, I’m just as excited as you to say goodbye to this wretched, ill-fated year.  I’m an eternal optimist but I’m also a realist.  When the calendar flips to January 1^st, 2021, nothing really will change except for the date on your iPhone.  I’m afraid 2021 is going to look a lot like 2020, at least at first.  Covid cases continue to surge, deaths are still climbing at an alarming rate, and it appears that even the distribution of the vaccine is going to be a giant shitshow.  I wish 2021 was like a reset button that we could hit and have our lives go back to normal in an instant.  Sadly, reset buttons only work for computers and video games, but not in the game of life. 

There’s a book that I read a long time ago called “The Blind Assassin” by Margaret Atwood.  I think I read it because my wife recommended it to me, and I saw that it won a bunch of awards.  In fact, I recall not liking the book at all and being bored by it.  But it did contain one message that I absorbed that changed the way I looked at my life and I usually am reminded of it around the holidays.  It alluded that as we go through life, especially when we are young, that we have a tendency to move from drama to drama and at the end of each episode, we crumple up our experiences like a piece of paper and reach for a fresh sheet. 

It’s only when we’re older that we realize that we can’t escape the things we did.  As the years go by, those crumpled pieces of paper unfold themselves and reveal themselves to be the manuscripts of our lives, each of the chapters inevitably connected to create our storyline. 

I think that’s how I lived my life for the longest time.  Relationships were like those pieces of paper to me.  If someone did something to me where I felt slighted, I would just throw them away and start again.  And because of that, I always felt like I had to keep my guard up, even around those closest to me.  If ever faced with conflict or any situation that made me feel uncomfortable, instead of confronting it head-on or acknowledge any of the feelings I was experiencing, I would either ignore it, or I would run from it. I’d always crumple it up and look for the next sheet.  Believe me, I’m working out a lot of this right now in therapy. 

Radio has always been like this too, and it some ways it enabled me to function in this way.  Obviously, there’s plenty of conflict in the radio industry, but there’s lots of turnover too.  If you live and work in this constant cycle, it’s difficult to get close to anyone on a personal level.  It’s also scary.  What happens next year when the person you friended at work gets laid off?  This has happened to me so many times that I eventually got numb to it.  I would avoid nurturing relationships in fear that I would just have to tear up another sheet of paper and start again. 

And then of course, when the layoff happens to you, radio cuts you off.  It scrubs you off their website, and deletes all your podcasts, and takes down all your videos.  They’ll never explain why you’re no longer there and will never mention your name again.  I’ve never understood this.  And all my work in therapy the past few months has highlighted how dysfunctional that is.  Being laid off for budget reasons is one thing.  Having your former employer and co-workers pretend like you never existed is another.  Ironically, I’m now the piece of paper that’s been thrown away. 

That is why I’m grateful to you for your support these past few months.  If you’ve taken the time to read this blog or listen to a podcast or just send me a message of encouragement, I say thank you and I will continue to say thank you a million times over.  The new year will not bring immediate change to our lives, but it does provide one thing:  Hope.  And if 2021 unravels the way I hope it does, then I promise on New Year’s Eve 2021, I’ll make sure to stay up late that night and raise a glass with you.