The Lasts

You’ve got a vice, oh yes you do. It’s something that you need/want to give up for the sake of your health, wealth, or just general wellbeing. Maybe it’s some minor OCD thing you picked up years ago, like unconsciously dry humping your bed covers as you fall asleep every night. Maybe it’s that you’ve gotten over the good bit of the heroin habit we all develop at some point in our lives and you think it’s time to kick it, who knows? Whatever it is, it’s something you do all the time and you want to stop it, so you set yourself a deadline. Sensible right? But it’s really not, because if you think that you’re absolutely guaranteed go through a big dose of The Lasts.

How formal and intentional The Lasts are varies from person to person and what they’re doing, but it’ll happen nonetheless. You’ll set yourself a deadline, let’s say next monday. That’s a few days away, and you’re absolutely definitely going to do it, so seen as it’s the last time you’ll get to enjoy your little vice for a while you’ll merrily indulge in it guilt-free. You don’t need that huge bar of chocolate, but as you’ll be giving it all up in a couple of days where’s the harm in enjoying everything one last time?

You’ll put this planned new beginning on something halfway significant, it’ll be the start of a week or month, but especially the new year. You’ll chose to finally get that weird lump in your balls looked at on the anniversary of the day your curious aunt died of prostate cancer, but you won’t quit smoking on a thursday because only perverts stop doing things part-way through the week. You know it to be true, it’s an unspoken and instinctual part of us all to delay things and even them up to make it all tidy.

I’m not innocent in it, I’ve done it for as long as I can remember, whether it was school projects or working out (which since 13 I’d promised to do every summer so I’d return to school six weeks later a bit closer to being an Adonis) we’ve all put off giving something up under the rational that it wasn’t the right time to do it, or that a couple more days would make sense, or after you’ve gotten the right amount of money or fulfilled some other bollocks objective before you could get started on this one.

Truth is there’s no reason why you can’t just start/stop right now, and it took me a while to realise that myself. This entry is sounding like some sort of shitey self-help guide, but if you’ve read this blog at any length at all you’ll know that I don’t believe in the golden light inside or the happiness of the universe. I much prefer to go with the tried and tested “fuck you” miserable attitude to sorting things out. It’s a nice nihilistic elitism that states the idea that inanimate objects can hold sway over you is fucking retarded, and that I’m far too above that shit to allow it to happen. Trying to quit smoking? Fuck you cigarettes. Going on a diet? Fuck you creamcakes.

And that’s all there is to it, besides practicalities like willpower and the fact you really want some of that damn delicious heroin. But I can’t be fucked going into all that, that’s for you to figure out. Me? I’m busy telling loaves of bread and ounces of weed to go fuck themselves.