Random #25: Resolutions, No New Styes

As anybody who has vainly tried to follow this blog knows, one of my resolutions wasn’t to blog frequently. Not that I’m not trying. I just don’t bother with resolutions anymore, haven’t for a very long time. I can live without unresolved resolutions perpetually hanging over my head. Sure, I could do with losing a few pounds (which means I’d have to stop drinking) and I’ve involuntarily started cutting down on my smoking habit (I just went through some very painful minor surgery removing a cluster of styes from my inner left eyelids, which the ophthalmologist blamed mostly on my nicotine intake*) but perhaps it’s that I’m old enough not to fool myself. I am my vices. I don’t see myself facing the next year without a beer and a cigarette in hand.

Nevertheless, I’m trying. When sloth is your biggest vice, everything requires effort. Getting out of bed, making (or ordering) something to eat, and coming down to this coffee shop to get some work done, these basic everyday activities tire me and grate on my indolent nature. But I’m trying. So it’s a Sunday afternoon and I’m sitting in this coffee shop with my laptop open in front of me and a cigarette in hand, working on a blog entry for this week (I’m not talking about this one) and trying to prepare for classes (I work this job because I don’t want a 9 to 5 so 9 to 5 winter intensives are very stressful for me). After I end up spending the next five or six hours at about 10 percent productivity, I’ll head downstairs to grab something to eat, then across the street to pick up a few beers at the supermarket, take the bus up to my apartment, and spend the rest of the evening rewarding myself for making the effort. This, my friends, is how to be happy with a new year, not resolutions.

* Styes aren’t caused by smoking but I couldn’t completely understand what the doctor was saying in Korean. Wikipedia says that internal styes are “infections of the meibomian sebaceous glands lining the inside of the eyelids” and can be caused by “poor nutrition, sleep deprivation, lack of hygiene or rubbing of the eyes.” That’s basically me in a nutshell—poor nutrition, sleep deprivation, lack of hygiene or rubbing of the eyes. I had these styes for the last couple months, giving them time to fill with pus and harden, making for a very excruciating time on the operating table. I couldn’t say exactly what the doctor did, but my guess is that she cut open the styes, squeezed the pus out of the glands, and then stitched them up. The inside of my eyelids. That’s certainly how it felt. If I had to make resolutions and it was something under my direct control, my resolution would be, no more styes.

The writer, the infirm