New Year's Resolution

11:50PM. It's ten minutes before midnight. It's another midnight and it's not. It's going to be a spanking new year. Year 2009. Vincent is trying to set some goals for the new year, something he has never seriously done in his entire adult life. Maybe that explains his lack of focus in life. He feels like he is running out of time. In actuality, he ran out of time two years ago. He is on borrowed time. His mom used to remind him he doesn't prioritize, always does things he shouldn't be doing and let things he ought to be doing slide. He doesn't let his mom down. He knows he should be sleeping yet he is not. Every night. He needs a New Year's Resolution, an ultimate to-do list now. Before mid night. To right his life.

It's been cold outside, just cold, no wind, no snow, no drama. The silence of the night is almost deafening if not for the occassional bangings and hissings of the radiator. The whole heating system is old and it's good at making noises but not heat. The house is always under heated in the winter he could never wear shorts or short sleeves like people live in apartment buildings do.

Vincent takes out a piece of paper and a pencil and sits himself down at the kitchen table. He starts pondering a list. He starts to think about goals and objectives, something he learned from long time ago. What goals are, what objectives are, and how to be realistic so that they are attainable and measurable. The kitchen reeks of cooked food that he doesn't normally notice except during this time of the day. Winston* Vincent lights a cigarette as if to combat the stench. The nicotine kicks in and now his brain is oozing with ideas. He begins his list by writing:

New Year's Resolution 2009

His penmanship has never been good, it is bad, actually bad is an understatement. But he almost takes pride in his bad handwriting. He has this twisted theory that only ugly people have good penmanship and only snobs would dwell on and take pride of good penmanship. But for the resolution, he tries to write as neat as possible, as neat as his mom would write, as neat as only an illiterate knows how. The kitchen should be the warmest place in the house but it is not. Vincent thinks the cold is hindering his resolution. He moves one flight down to the basement of the house where the mother of all heat comes from, the boiler room.

It's been quite some time since he left his bedroom to start his New Year's Resolution. He thinks he needs to find out what time it is, he wants to see Times Square on New Year Eve, he wants to know what is going on. So he turns on the computer in the basement. The computer is a big beige box from the '90s but it simply works. Vincent always feels like he mistreats his old trusty machine by leaving it in the basement, out of sight, together with the aging heater, the sewage system, the entrails of the house, the necessary unpleasantries of modern living. Vincent lights another cigarette while the computer slowly comes to life. It's 1:25 AM 1/1/2009. Vincent just can't locate the paper anymore. Perhaps it's not the cold that made him go down to the basement. He just needs be distracted. But distracted from what? That's something he needs to figure out. Meanwhile he is checking on the news, his emails, and more news, just like every night.

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*thanks to Haricot for catching that.

Still more.