I am, by nature, a nonconformist and contrarian. I tend to go against the grain – and general mainstream sentiment – on a lot of things. And this has nothing to do with the fact that the mascot at my collegiate alma mater is the Rebels.
For example, around here, most people refer to artificially sweetened carbonated beverages as “pop.” I don’t. I was raised by expatriated New Yorkers, and we always called it “soda,” something I still call such beverages, and always will. Pop is either an antiseptic quasi-musical product or something Demond Wilson’s Lamont character called Redd Foxx on “Sanford and Son.”
The exception was when I went back to the old country in October 1999. Me and my cousin Danny went to an ice cream place in New Jersey the night I arrived. I ordered a banana split, “and a pop.” The guy behind the counter – befuddled by the use of an expression foreign in those parts yet tinted with a hint of New York accent – gave me a strange look and asked “where the hell are you from?” Danny came to my rescue, telling the guy I was from Seattle and tried to justify my malapropism on “that grunge rock thing.”
So having said that, I also don’t partake in something many people do this time of year: making New Year’s resolutions.
I have no particular reason why I don’t make resolutions. And unlike certain topics/current events/human behavioral patterns, I don’t have a rant of possibly questionable logic to argue against making such declarations.
But if I had made resolutions a year ago, I can look back and say I succeeded – big time.
A year ago, changes were needed. I decided to return to Seattle, which I did at the end of March. I had no job when I arrived, and enough money to last maybe a month. And it would’ve lasted even less if it weren’t for my best friend Billy putting me up at his Renton pad rent-free for two months, twice as long as I intended. A plan, however, emerged: I wanted to get going in earnest on writing projects, drop some weight, and pursue other creative interests.
Once I got this job, the next move was getting involved with a film project. My college minor was film studies, and I finally got to use those skills on an independent production that advertised for crew members in a Seattle alternative weekly.
Those summer weekend days were long, but enjoyable. The film might not see theaters, at least not with the footage we shot, but the writer-director, Marty Martin of Bothell, is aiming at selling the script to a major studio and hopefully redoing it with a studio’s budget behind it.
Outside of the job I wrote a lot, even getting to the point where a humorous memoir is four chapters shy of completion. Once that book is out on query, after editing and preparing marketing specs, I may continue work on a screenplay treatment and maybe work on a collection of what can best be called children’s stories written for slightly-warped adult minds. Perhaps I’ll even get going again on a stalled countercultural novel.
Did I mention I lost 10 pounds last summer in-line skating at Seattle’s Green Lake? And I became a much better guitar player, even if my bass guitar chops suffered a bit because of my devotion to my Fender Stratocaster and fuzz distortion pedal. I can safely say, with some degree of bravado, that I am pretty much a Ramones-style power chord virtuoso.
So, without making any New Year’s resolutions, I actually accomplished what would’ve been my resolutions if I made some.
Therefore, my resolution for Y2K-plus-4 is perfectly logical: Make no resolutions.
John Santana is the editor of the Mill Creek edition of the Enterprise.
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