Randall Sokoloff's Open Salon Blog

I Am Not Franz Kafka?

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 14:02:50 -0500

All through out my twenties I thought I was Franz Kafka (July 3, 1883- June 3, 1924). He was skinny, tall, introverted, alienated, intellectual, dark-skinned, well dressed, nervous, dramatic and Jewish. So was I. Kafka had a deep longing to be a writer and so did I. He loved literature, his sister, women, exercise and hated his job- just like I did. Kafka had a father, Hermann Kafka (1852-1931), who was a huge, dominating, worldly, loud, overbearing, oppressive and successful business man- just like mine. Kafka wrote "Letter To His Father" in which he spoke of being profoundly affected, both physically and psychologically, by his father's authoritative and demanding character. I could have written the exact same letter to my father and I often did (I would copy Kafka's letter and put some sentences in my own words and then mail a shorter version of "Brief an den Vader" to my father). So many things seemed to indicate to me that Kafka was just like I or I was just like him. I deeply related to his short stories and read and re-read his novels America, The Trial and The Castle. His novella, "The Metamorphosis" felt like the perfect metaphor for my life.

One of the difficulties of aging is that as years pass one begins to realize the misguided thinking of ones youth. One sees how much of their behavior was a fervid rebellion or unorganized folly against parents, orthodoxy and attempts to control- no matter how much one thought their behavior was authentic, ideological and revolutionary at the time. The joys of youth are hidden in its naivety, in youth's ignorance of the root cause of behavior (I miss those days). As I have traveled through my thirties and am nearing my forties (shedding some of the anger and idealisms of my youth) I am beginning to realize that I am not like Kafka at all. At least I don't think so. On the 18th of June 1906, Franz Kafka received his Doctorate of Law. He went to work for a large Italian insurance company where he worked for a year before quitting. Then he found a job with Worker's Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia where he worked for the next fourteen years of his life. I have never worked this long at any job with such uncompromising dedication as Kafka- nor would I want to. Kafka was a diligent and reliable employee although he often complained that he "despised the job." His father often referred to his son's career choice as "Brotberuf," literally meaning "bread job," a job done only to pay the bills. I would never want to imagine living like this.

I am not a Zionist. I have difficulty relating to those who are. It is not clear if Franz Kafka was a Zionist (I think he was) even though he sympathized with the Jews whom he thought deserved a homeland in Palestine. I have very little sympathy for Israel whose government and military is committing and has been committing for years daily human rights violations against the Palestinian people. Kafka would certainly not condone Israels current militaristic behavior but we would certainly have differing opinions about the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and the Jewish diaspora- were Kafka alive today. Even though there is not a lot of "Jewishness" in Kafka's literary work- Kafka was very interested in Yiddish Theatre and Yiddish Literature, whereas I find these two art forms incredibly dull. Judaism does not appeal to me as it did to Kafka. Kafka read the Talmud daily and the few times that I have tried to read the Talmud I have fallen asleep.

Kafka was a very spiritual man and so am I. However, Kafka's spirituality was very philosophical whereas mine is metaphysical, almost verging upon the new age. Gustav Janouch, who would often visit Kafka at work and then record the things that they talked about (which was later published as the book "Conversations With Kafka") said that Kafka was a saint dressed in businessman clothes. Kafka often spoke about the virtues of patience. I have a tendency to be impatient. I have always wanted what I want now but Kafka once said, "Patience is the master-key to every situation. One must have sympathy for everything, surrender to everything, but at the same time remain patient and forbearing." Kafka was simply talking about the Buddhist idea of "letting go and being in the moment." Unlike Kafka, who is said to have been a master of being in the moment, I am almost incapable of spending more than a minute or two in the "now."

Kafka once said to Gustav while they where on a crystalline autumn day walk, "there is no such thing as bending or breaking. It is a question only of overcoming, which begins with overcoming oneself. That cannot be avoided. To abandon the path is always to break into pieces. One must patiently accept everything and let it grow within oneself. The barriers of the fear-ridden can only be broken by love. One must, in the dead leaves that rustle around one, already see the young, fresh green of spring, and wait. Patience is the true foundation on which to make one's dreams come true." I happen to completely agree with this sentiment. I often practice this way of being myself and talk about it with others. The major difference between Kafka and I is that when I say something like this to people they look confused or take me for a new age freak. But when Kafka said the exact same thing- it gets recorded and written down in a book! I am not complaining, nor am I jealous of Kafka- I just recognize that Kafka and I obviously have very different ways of enunciating and expressing our ideas.

I have always enjoyed working nights or staying up late into the night. It is strange to me that Kafka would say something like, "working at night is very bad for one’s health. And besides you tear yourself out of the human community. The night side of life becomes the day-side for you, and what is day for other men changes into a dream for you." I find this strange because I know that Kafka would often return home from work at three or four in the afternoon, take a nap, eat dinner and then write until late in the evening. He had to be at work before the sun came up, six days a week, and he would very often only sleep two or three hours a night because he would stay up slaving away at his stories or novels. I myself often work as a waiter when I cannot find any other way to make economic ends meet (also one benefit to working as a waiter is that I can have my days free to write, paint, read or do whatever I want). I enjoy the nighttime hours that allow me to feel separate from the normalized nine to five "human community." A writer is often an outsider anyways- and my work as a waiter often confirms my outsider status. Kafka may disagree with my chosen line of work and tell me that I am selling myself short or that it is bad for my health to work late into the night- but I could easily turn the situation around and call him a hypocrite.

No, I am not Kafka. Sure, if someone compared our biographies they would find superficial similarities. Kafka was a health nut and so am I. Kafka was continually dependent on and exhausted by his fathers support, so am I. Kafka had issues with sex, intimacy and choosing between the writing life and the domestic life- so do I. Kafka liked to draw, so do I. Kafka prayed, I meditate. Kafka loved the streets, palaces, gardens and churches of the city where he was born and I love the rolling hills, smells, trees and avenues of the city where I grew up. Kafka was too shy and reserved for friendship and sometimes I think I am as well. Kafka talked about the coming age where the world would be populated with robots, catastrophe, bureaucracy and "chains that can not be broken because there are no chains that can be seen." I am living in this age. Several years before the holocaust occurred Kafka said "we live in a morass of corroding lies and illusions, in which terrible and monstrous things happen, which journalists report with amused objectivity and thus- without anyone noticing- trample on the lives of millions of people as if they were worthless insects (Fox News comes immediately to mind)." I feel like the same thing could be said about the world in which I currently reside. But even with all these similarities between Kafka and I- I am no Franz Kafka.

"Man does not grow from below upwards but from within outwards. This is a fundamental condition of all freedom in life," Kafka said to Gustave one day as he was buried in paperwork that was stacked up in piles on his desk. The room in which Kafka worked was filled with rows of desks and Gustav sat in a chair besides Kafka's desk listening to him talk. "It is not an artificially constructed social environment but an attitude to oneself and to the world, which it is a perpetual struggle to maintain. It is the condition of man's freedom." Gustave could not help but think that Kafka could be an enlightened being hidden away in the machinations of the bureaucratic work-a-day world. I myself need to find an "ordinary" job so that I can afford some financial security in my life. Like Kafka's dreams, my dreams of being a writer have not quite worked out and lately, I have been realizing how much my consciousness or my thoughts determines the reality that I experience. I am starting to get glimpses of how it is my attitude or way of perceiving that creates my reality. As much as my intellectual mind wants to disregard this spiritual truth- I am starting to understand how this is really works. But still- this does not make me Franz Kafka.

Through out my twenties I never saw Kafka as a guru or a beholder of deep spiritual wisdom. Now I do. Instead I saw him as an existentialist- a victim of a society that constantly tried to tear him away from his art. I related to Kafka's struggle against his father and his constant attempts to be taken seriously as a writer by his family, friends and the surrounding world in which he lived. Kafka only had a few short stories published in his lifetime and was virtually unknown as a writer and human being. Kafka would often go to soirees or intellectual gatherings and read his stories out loud to those few people who were willing to listen. I, on the other hand, keep a blog in which I write stories and essays for the few people who are willing to read my work. Kafka struggled to balance his literary aspirations with his career, his parents and his relationships with women- I do the same. Without question- Kafka suffered and struggled through out his life to create the body of literature, which is now known as some of the greatest writings of the twentieth century. Even though he demanded that all his work be burned upon the time of his death- his friend Max Brod ignored this final wish upon realizing how great his writings really were. I myself would never want my work destroyed after my death and I have every intention of being a well-respected writer long before I am gone.

I am not Kafka? No I am not. The more I write the more I become more aware of the naivety or mistaken thinking in my twenties. Maybe one might disagree with this because the superficial similarities between Kafka and I outweigh the differences. Kafka slept with his window open, and so do I. Kafka believed in the power of prayer and so do I. Kafka tried hard to please his father often sacrificing his true self- so do I. Maybe I am Kafka and maybe I am not- but it is pretty clear to me that I am not. Above my desk hangs a picture of Kafka and a quote from Kafka that I read every day. It brings me comfort and validation to know that someone from the distant past understood the truths that I believe in today. The quote says, "Just be quiet and patient. Let evil and unpleasantness pass quietly over you. Do not try to avoid them. On the contrary, observe them carefully. Let active understanding take the place of reflex irritation, and you will grow out of your trouble. Men can achieve greatness only by surmounting their own littleness." After reading this I always take a deep breath, hold it and think, no I am definitely not Franz Kafka. Then I exhale.

Nothing Man

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:02:51 -0500

“I am somebody too! I feel that strength in me. Comfort, my father’s money, family, hometown, I will leave it all behind. What I am destined to conquer I do not know yet. But I know that one day I will come back, crowned with glory.” Osman Lins from “Nine, Novena”

My mother-in-law thinks I am a bum. My therapist thinks I feel very small inside. My wife thinks I have very little ambition and have “bum-ish” tendencies. My cat has been looking at me with disdain since I have been unemployed and unable to buy him the food he likes. My neighbor often asks me if I have found a job yet and appears to think that there is something suspicious about me. My father-in-law is worried about my ability to provide for his daughter in a manner that she deserves. My wife does not feel taken care of by me. My mother is worried about my ability to economically support myself and keep a roof over my head. The one thing that all of these people have in common is that they know I enjoy doing nothing. Some of them see me doing nothing almost everyday. Just last night my wife said to me that I do nothing better than anyone she knows.

I don’t think I was always this way. The enjoyment of doing nothing has grown the more I have failed at or disliked doing something. My therapist tells me that I space out a lot and when I asked my wife if she thinks I space out she told me that I “space out all the time.” I know why I space out. As a kid and teenager spacing out was a survival mechanism. My world felt so dangerous, confused, lonely and emotionally unstable that spacing out was the only place I could feel safe and secure. I fed my “space outs” with music, alcohol, weed, pornography, art, movies- anything to remove me from “the real world.” I guess I fed my ’space outs” too much because now as an adult it has grown into a full-fledged passion for doing nothing.

My enjoyment of doing nothing does not have anything to do with my Buddhist beliefs. Nor does it have anything to do with my belief that if more human beings did nothing the planet could be saved from environmental catastrophe, war, greed and depression. We would live in a peaceful world. Doing nothing is like sipping a fine wine. It is an acquired taste that has to be cultivated over the span of many years. One has to work hard to do nothing. The society in which we live trains us to always be doing something, to keep busy until we are too sick, too much in debt, too old or too dead to keep doing. Doing nothing is anti-capitalistic and in a sense it is a revolution, a new world order. But I live in a society where everyone forgets to smell the roses and instead enjoys tripping over their feet from day-to-day. By doing nothing I realize that I am removing myself from the “human world” and instead living in another world that might be found deep inside my head or in some other dimension.

I like to smell, listen, touch and feel. I like the sound of the wind surfing across my ears or the feeling of the sun sizzling my skin. I enjoy being alive much more than I enjoy working on any one thing in particular. I prefer petting a cat to talking to a human being and I enjoy the solitude that descends over me when I take a long walk. As a lover of literature and music- I need as much time alone to indulge these passions as if they were a full-time job. Without moving a bone in my body I could happily watch the sun slowly descend from the top of sky until it hides away behind the earth. I am a lover of all things living and mysterious. By doing nothing I feel like I have much more time simply to be.

But then I realize that I do live in a human world where man cannot live on water alone (even water costs money these days). Maybe I would do something if I could find something that I enjoy as much as I enjoy doing nothing. Maybe I would take a vitamin supplement if I knew it would give me the motivation I need to do something. If I could travel back in time and wipe out all the years of my life spent in sadness, anxiety, fear, anger, struggle and abandonment maybe then I would have the energy and ambition to be somebody. But nothing gives me as much pleasure as doing nothing. I would sleep eleven hours a day if I could escape from the guilt that comes along with sleeping in everyday (I am often told that I can sleep when I am dead but I need to be alive in order to enjoy the pleasures of sleep). I would walk for the entire day, everyday with no destination in sight, if I did not have rent to pay, a desire for good food and a wife that I want to care for. My ambition is centered in doing nothing; I am motivated to do nothing because it is the only thing that feels effortless, safe and right for me. I am good at being a nothing man.

Gertrude Stein once said that a great artist needs to spend ninety percent of their time doing nothing but contemplating the mysteries of the universe. The other ten percent of time needs to be spent in hard, intensive, creative work. “No good art comes from tired and overworked artists. Neither does good art come from busy artists. Art is supposed to teach us something about ourselves and the universe in which we live. How is an artist who is too busy, overworked and tired going to know anything about themselves let alone the universe in which they live?” Gertrude Stein once said. She coached many great artists in her day like Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Oscar Wilde and Virginia Woolf; so I am banking upon what she says being true.

I have been coming across the word courage a lot the past few weeks. For a long time I always thought that courage meant being brave in the face of danger. Recently courage has started to mean something very different for me. When Buddhists, Hindus or Muslims talk about courage they do not mean to be brave or take risks as much as they mean to see the truth in things as they are and have the courage to stay on your own path rather than falling away into the illusion that everyone else believes to be true. This is the heroe’s journey. Even though my mother-in-law, father-in-law, my wife, my neighbor, my mother, my cat, my therapist are all concerned about my ability to do something in this world that will earn me a decent income, some respect and the ability to be a provide for my wife and future family; I need to have courage. The courage to continue on the path that feels right for me- despite what others may think. The courage to continue to do nothing and trust that from nothing something brilliant and unforseen will grow. For now- I am going to go sit in the sun.

The Man Who Pissed A Miracle

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 01:02:05 -0500

Three weeks ago I peed upon a large plot of dirt that was located behind my parents home. I was locked out and had to go. The large plot of dirt was the only piece of land on my parent’s property that was not touched by landscaping. My father had wanted to build a Japanese tea garden on the dirt plot but because of the recent economic recession he had decided to wait it out. I was in my parent’s neighborhood that day (I went to a job interview) and I decided to stop in. Not only was I hoping to borrow some money but I desperately needed to use the toilet. When I found no one at home- I had no choice but to pee on their small piece of land. I peed without any thought about the personal or familial violation I may have been committing. Instead I just relished in the feeling of release. When I was finished watering the soil with my urine, I zipped up my pants and drove back to my home.

Today I returned to my parent’s home and was stunned by what I saw. In the very plot of dirt where I peed three weeks before- grew a gorgeous lemon tree. My father and I stood in silence under the sun staring at this aberration of a lemon tree that had grown over four feet tall- in no time. Full grown lemons sat perched upon the end of its branches and a yellow hue highlighted the trees fluorescent leaves. For a few minutes all thoughts about my peeing in this spot three weeks before escaped me. I asked my father if he was sure that the gardeners did not plant this tree. He told me that he was cutting expenses for the time being and one of those expenses was the gardener. No one had worked on this land for months. My mother came out with a cup of iced tea in her hand and said “isn’t it amazing!!” I looked at my mom and said, “how could this be?” My father picked a lemon from the tree and handed it to me. It was the most beautiful lemon I had ever seen. I could smell it before it was in the palm of my hand. “Amazing,” was all I could say.

And then I remembered that three weeks before I had taken a piss in the same spot where the lemon tree now stood. I questioned myself for a few minutes trying to convince myself that the tree must have been here before I peed. It was not. There was no way to explain what was before my eyes other than that my urine had given birth to this lemon tree. How this could be escapes my rational mind but I remember when I gave a urine sample to my doctor a few months ago he told me it was the most nutrient dense urine he had ever seen. “It almost reminds me of lemon juice,” he said. I thought nothing of this remark until today.

As I stood besides the lemon tree with my mother and father- I was shocked by the possible power of my pee. I wanted to tell them that I know the reason why the tree suddenly appeared. They may be upset that I peed on their property but once their anger simmered and eventually blew away maybe then they would realize the power of their son’s pee. All hurt feelings and personal offense would possibly turn into an emotion of awe and reverence towards the holly man who was their son. Finally they would think that after 38 years of failure on earth- I had hidden potential yet to be taped into. As my mother stood there repeating, “incredible” over and over- I remained silent, too afraid that if I took the risk and told the truth I would be exiled- never allowed to return to their home again. My father went inside and got his camera and for the rest of the afternoon I pretended to be as surprised as they were about this strange lemon tree that grew from my pee.

The Great Escape (a personal narrative)

Tue, 5 Jan 2010 18:01:08 -0500

I am currently in therapy twice a week. My therapist is using a psychological modality called EMDR to help treat me. How EMDR works is, I put on headphones that play an alternating beeping sound in each ear. The beeping sound is slow, rhythmical and reminds me of a game of relaxed Sunday tennis. Once I have closed my eyes, taken several deep breaths and become comfortable- she then tells me to go to my safe place. My safe place is a creation of my imagination- a place on earth that does not yet exist. It is a very modern room with warm hardwood floors, a comfortable couch, walls lined with books and tall windows that look out onto redwood trees and a fog covered Northern Californian coast line. There is a beloved large Rottweiler (my protector) resting at my feet and I am sitting on the couch with my legs crossed looking out at the sea.

Once I am able to fully visualize myself in my safe place my therapist asks me to feel my body. The feelings of openness, peace, satisfaction, safety and relaxation that I feel are unusual for my normally tense and constricted “real” body. I enjoy this feeling of freedom and drink it down like I would a bottle of red wine. Once I am comfortable in this space my therapist then asks me to focus on feelings of impending doom. “Go back through the television channels of your childhood and find a particular time when you felt doom,” she says. This is not difficult for me, and immediately I am met by memories that I would rather not have. I try to disconnect and my therapist notices my discomfort. She asks me what is going on, “I am afraid that I am going to suffocate and die,” I say and she reassures me that I am safe.

For as long as I can remember I have been suffering through the outrageous slings and arrows of chronic anxiety (which, is defined as a painful or apprehensive uneasiness of mind usually over an impending or anticipated ill). As a grown man, I have not yet been able to outgrow the box that anxiety keeps me stuck in. Instead, my anxiety has mutated and taken on new and disconcerting forms. As resistant as I once was to doing any form of therapy, about six months ago I was not leaving my house, my throat was closing up every time I went in public and my heart was moving in strange ways inside my chest. My wife insisted that I get help from someone other than the wine bottle. So did a lot of other concerned individuals. One thing I have learned in life is that if more than two people are telling me the same thing, repeatedly, maybe I should humble myself and listen. So now, I find myself in a womb like purple chair twice a week listening to alternating beeping sounds through a headphone and reliving a past that I thought was buried far beneath the ground.

Years ago when I read Marcel Proust’s À La Recherché Du Temps Perdu (“The Remembrance Of Things Past”) I was struck by how our past experiences can manifest in the present moment through the simple act of tasting, touching, hearing, smelling and seeing. A simple smell can reunite us with an individual that has been dead for over twenty years. A slight sound can bring us back to a place we have not seen in over a decade. A little taste of a cookie can remind us of a childhood experience we thought was long ago digested away. As hard as I have tried to repress my past- it seems to still endure in me with every sight, sound, taste, smell and touch I have. My past is embedded in my present, embedded in the very cells of my living body like a piece of glue that has dried on my skin. Through the hours spent in my therapist’s office, I am slowly learning that my past may have more to do with who I am today than I could have ever imagined.

I have a fear of enclosed spaces. I also have a fear of suffocating and loosing control, especially in public. I have a fear of open spaces, where there is no immediate help in sight. When I was around eight through twelve I always had to have a bottle filled with water when I drove in a car. I was afraid that my throat would close up and I would not be able to breath. This happened to me a few times and drinking water always seemed to bring relief. Now at the age of thirty-eight I have a hard time driving in a car without a flask filled with red wine or hard booze. I get a lot of anxiety out on the open road, my head fills up with a dreadful medley of chattering thoughts and images and the booze is the only thing that makes all the discomfort slither away.

I have fled from commercial airplanes, just as they were about to shut the door. I have pulled my car over on freeways and run for my life, gasping for air. I have vomited when locked in small rooms. I have panicked on bridges and on bicycle rides in the country. At the age of eleven I sat in a doctor’s office suffering from a fear that my lungs would collapse and I could stop breathing. I have even lost control in my father’s small airplane (my throat had closed up again and I did not have a bottle of water) as it was getting ready to land, nearly causing my father to crash the plane with my sister and mother in it. All of this happened to me before the age of seventeen, before I could understand what the hell was going on. And now as a 38-year-old man who has been diagnosed with panic disorder, depression and minor agoraphobia- I am having to live all of this all over again.

I enjoy listening to the beeping sounds. I find them to be calming (even though at times the rhythmic beeping makes me think about what it must be like to lye in a hospital bed listening to the heart rate monitoring machine). I listen to my therapists soothing voice and fall away into each alternating beep, returning to a world that I thought was long gone. I do not lose myself in tears or have a terribly unpleasant emotional response (which, my therapists tells me normally happens) but I have at times felt like I was going to vomit, my heart rate does speed up occasionally and I do feel short of breath when recalling past traumas. I often interrupt the session, open my eyes and say, “why do we have to do this? It’s just to painful to go back to these places,” but my therapist insists that it is very important if I am going to heal the pain and anxiety I still struggle with everyday.

When I recall my past life and all my struggles with fear and anxiety, I sometimes think that Woody Allen could not write a better script. A part of me laughs and says how ridiculous and comedic it all is. “What a joke!” I think. Here is this child and young adult living an upper class country club existence in what appears to be, on the outside, the ideal American dream. On the inside however, I am crippled with fear, terrified of my big house, my dad’s Mercedes and the mandatory weekend flights in his airplane. But then there is this other part of me- the part of me that lives in my safe place and feels comfortable, satisfied and at peace all the time. This part of me says, “there is nothing funny or ridiculous about what you have had to endure. In fact, it is really sad and fucked up and has taken a heavy toll upon your health and quality of life. You need to really understand what is going on here so you can open your heart and hopefully regain control, power and a sense of wellbeing. Then one day, if you really do all the hard work to heal your mind, heart and soul- you can become me.”

When my fifty-minute session is up, my therapist takes the headphones off my head and tells me to just relax and breathe. The beeping stops, my safe place goes away, the beloved Rottweiler fades away, my childhood memories recede and I return to the normalcy of my therapist’s office. I try not to notice a few tears swelling up in the corner of my tired eyes. I cannot cry in front of another. My therapist sits back down in her chair, which is directly across from mine. She takes a few deep breaths with me. I can see a teary redness in her eyes that suggests to me that she also wants to cry. She just stares in my eyes with what feels like unconditional love and then says to me “I am so sorry that you have to re-live all of this. I am so sorry for you and what you have had to suffer through. But we are going to get to the bottom of this and somehow set you free so that you no longer feel like you are suffocating and have to make the great escape.” There is a moment of silence. I look out the window and then down at my feet. It is then that I feel a rebellious tear trickling its way down my cheek.

My 89 New Year's Resolutions

Sat, 2 Jan 2010 13:01:31 -0500

1) eat more walnuts and pistachios

2) impregnate wife (with her consent, of course)

3) work on overcoming anxiety

4) buy new underwear

5) recycle and compost most of my waste

6) recite a daily mantra

7) build something

8. spend more time with birds

9) spend less time on-line

10) drink less booze

11) be a better lover

12) leave less facebook status updates

13) have sex more

14) cultivate a daily meditation practice

15) make a new friend

16) get rid of a few old friends

17) contemplate the real meaning of freedom

18) be free

19) work as a Teacher

20) read more poetry

21) learn to enjoy doing the dishes

22) listen to my heart more than to my head

23) row a boat at least once a month

24) read everything Richard Brautigan has written

25) read everything John Fante has written

26) get a dog

27) become financially independent

28) remain healthy

29) continue to pursue dreams and do not be discouraged by those who have given up on their dreams

30) pay off credit card

31) grow vegetables

32) consider finding a mistress (with wife’s consent, of course)

33) spend less time alone

34) write more poetry

35) self publish a novel or book of short stories

36) practice compassion and gratitude

37) eat more (organic) hot dogs

38) bring my own shopping bags to the market

39) use less plastic

40) grow hair long (n0 haircuts)

41) ride a horse

42) participate in a protest march

43) save $2,000

44) be honest even when you feel like lying

45) publish a few poems

46) figure out where all my lost socks go

47) start feeding cat more regularly

48) sleep less

49) visit a farm

50) dance more

51) smile more

52) laugh more

53) stop listening to voices in my head

54) stop talking with the voices in my head when in public

55) surrender all need for control

56) listen deeply

57) socialize more with people even though I do not enjoy socializing

58) play board games with wife

59) volunteer someplace

60) buy more socks

61) find true self

62) hug and climb trees

63) accept my life fully without needing anything to be different

64) love

65) help others when I can, but do not sacrifice myself for others who want to get out of me whatever they can (for their own gain)

66) plant a tree

67) stop eating so much cheese

68) learn how to fix bicycles

69) cultivate a relationship with someone over the age of 75

70) buy myself a gift once a month

71) drink more herbal tea

72) plant a garden that grows dollar bills

73) embrace growing older without fear

74) go on a meditation retreat

75) iron clothes more often

76) eat less white flour

77) swim

78) let go of the future and the past, simplify

79) work towards being able to bend over from waist and touch fingers to feet

80) visit a dentist

81) get a foot massage

82) be comfortable with being weird

83) build up arm muscles (preferably, the result of having more sex)

84) work on improving my marriage

85) buy a kitchen table

86) drink more water

87) spend time with a river

88) keep fresh flowers in my home at all times

89) do not get upset with myself if I do not accomplish all these resolutions, instead remember that I did the best I can