Last summer was a time when everything went right for me. I started dating my girlfriend, I had an amazing time with my friends, I threw the Pants Party, we won a trip to Mexico and a bunch of other fun stuff. It was a really great summer and I will always cherish it. As time went by and the summer turned to fall things stayed good but not as great and then in the winter things started to change like they always do.

Last year was supposed to be the year that it all ended. The year I was supposed to move and stop working as a server and everything would be different and better and awesome. Then I got caught up with being in love and I didn’t do that. I don’t regret it, but that’s what happened. So I stayed at Popeyes and I stayed in Lake Geneva and I didn’t do some things I wanted to do because I was so happy I didn’t want anything to change.

Working as a server in a resort town in the winter is hell. You don’t make any money, but your bills are all more because you’re home all the time and you’re cranking the heat. You can’t do anything because you don’t have any money and it’s so cold you don’t want to. There are a lot of great things about winter, for example sleeping next to someone is so much better in the winter and the holidays are fun, but most of it sucks. I didn’t really like this winter. My bad times at work just amplified how much I didn’t want to do this anymore. My roommate stopped paying his bills which necessitated a move and then when the seasons changed I decided to tell my boss “fuck you” and got myself fired. (I regret this now less than ever.) It took me a couple months to figure it out after that, both because I didn’t really have a plan and it was hard to find a job, and it was a hard time for me. No job. No money. Living at my girlfriend’s mom’s house. Some friends stopped calling. My laptop died. It felt like the world was against me. It felt like the Year of Not Vince, like some karmic retribution for how happy I’d been the summer before. I was like Buffy after she came back from Heaven and it felt like the worst time of my life.  (In retrospect it probably wasn’t and I should have spent more time appreciating what I did have going for me and less time depressed about what I didn’t, but that’s easy to say now.) I let it get to me and I stopped being me which led to me ending up single.

It’s been a bad year, but it’s over now. I realize now that it was the worst year because I let it be. Like I said before, I stopped being me. I got depressed and I wouldn’t let anyone get me out of it. I pushed away anyone who tried. I hid from the world. I wasn’t making things happen. I stopped feeling like I was in control of my own life and that’s not me. I’m Harvey Dent. I make my own luck.

It’s only been a couple weeks of adopting this mindset and already things are starting to look up for me. I got some potentially capital-g Great news about my website business, I might be doing a children’s book with an artist I met just for kicks, getting some job interviews, basically managing a restaurant for now, figured out a strategy for some website ideas that have been bugging me for a couple months, getting back in a writing groove,  and I FINALLY have a screenplay idea that I believe in. It’s all going to be fine. Things are going to work out and I am going to be better than ever. The key phrase being “going to”, but it will happen. Sometimes you just need to believe in yourself. No one writes songs about the ones that come easy.

Also, there is this thing down here which I will try and keep updated on the site (I plan to write more) to track my progress.

7 down. 27 to go. THE QUEST FOR 180.