New Year’s Revolution

The following was written into my iPhone during the hours of 2-4am on New Year’s Eve.

My name is Tyler Lauletta and I am about to start a journey. After a family Christmas gathering I decided to hang around in California in an attempt for an exciting story to begin the New Year. I was planning on meeting up with a good friend in San Francisco, but plans fell through as they sometimes do. Instead I decided hitch a car ride with my Uncle Ted and cousin Jen to hang with my cousin Theo in the town he grew up in for a bit. On the drive, we visited a few of the places my ancestors lived, one of which is pictured above. After two days with Theo and late-night walks and ninja missions, new plans unfolded.

My Pops is back working in Vegas for possibly his final week. Another cousin (Chirsteal) had told me that she and her boyfriend were seeing The Roots in Vegas to celebrate the New Year. New Year’s Eve is always a rough day for me. It is a lot of pressure on one night to have a good time, and that pressure is compounded by the fact that I still, probably incorrectly, remember a New Year’s with a former love of mine to be the greatest night of my life.

Here was a chance to break that. Me and The Roots. In a city where I would be free to pursue my passion for gambling to its fullest extent. With my Pops during his last leg of work there.

I booked a bus and a train and another bus. At a little after 2am this morning my cousin and I drove out of Templeton, California to get to my bus stop.

It is now 3:22am PST my adventure begins. I am on a bus to Santa Barbara to catch a train to Los Angeles to catch a bus to Las Vegas. I can’t write in my notebook because it is dark and late and everyone on the bus aside from me and two others in the back who are quietly travel-flirting. I can’t be the crazy person who turns a light on so he can furiously scribble into his journal. But phones are allowed. In a few hours I will be in Vegas seeing The Roots, cleansing myself of the year that has been and celebrating the beauty of the 365 days to come.

2015 is going to be dope.

The bus driver is playing old soul music that is too quiet for me to Shazam. The road is as empty as I have ever seen a road be. I am on a mission to enjoy the final day of 2014 in an effort to do it justice. But more to start becoming what I am supposed to become. I often tell myself, “tomorrow is the day.” Tomorrow is the day that I start exercising. Tomorrow is the day that I start writing my novel. Tomorrow is the day I start something great. But then tomorrow comes and it is today and I realize those things I was planning on doing today are super hard and I can just do them later. Tomorrow.

Today is the last day of the year. Tomorrow 2015 will start. I have an idea for a real resolution that I will hopefully post about later today, but there are a few larger, less quantifiable goals that I have also set for myself, that I want to put to public record in order to further their likelihood of becoming reality.

I have told myself that in 2015 I want to live my life more. To celebrate the beauty of being alive and all that that means. To start loving myself and chasing what I love because I know that I can do it.

That resolution won’t start tomorrow. It will start today. December 31st, 2014.

The things I have to do, the columns on New Year’s and gambling I have to write, the good times I have to explore and devote myself to, they are all too important to put off until tomorrow.

So they have to start today.

I just have to get some sleep first.