the summer in january

It's like summer here in San Francisco this past week. I think it's been hitting the seventies at high noon. It's like summer but without the summery optimism. Just got thru new year, which always carry with it a heavy dose of melancholy. Melancholy for another year lost and for another year that seems no better than the last. There is of course always the urge to change, but even greater is the urge to stay the same. It takes an insurmountable effort to change, and I don't believe it's in me. And the new year always makes me reflect on this. Whenever I take stock, I always come up short, as if someone has been skimming the fat behind my back. Nightly he comes and steals from right under me.

So here I am, standing in a train in the middle of January, sweating under my hoodie and jacket, watching the passing platforms. I wonder sometimes how is it that my fellow passengers go about their business, how they get along so swimmingly, how they progress from one stage of life to the next as if everything is on auto pilot, how is it that my life does not have this mechanism.

In a way it might be some consolation for me to believe that everyone is just trying harder than me and doing it a little better than me. At least then I can just put in more effort to get better results. But you see, I don't fundamentally believe that to be true. I think I am trying as hard as the average person out there on the train. I think I have better intention, greater desire, work harder, extend myself farther than generally the guy sitting next to me. I am just missing something, something unidentifiable to me. I have no freaking idea what that something is. Maybe it's just plain dumb luck. Whatever it is, it's got me stuck in neutral. It's kicked me in the ass. It's got me bowed over. It's making me hate new year's, particularly a new year disguising itself as summer but really is frigid to the bone.