Is this the year?

When it gets to this time of the year people either indulge in pointless resolutions or try to dedicate themselves to something they truly believe in and will do their best to make it happen.

I've been reflecting a little bit on life and the world and I keep coming up with what I'm tired of and those things I'd simply like to see stop.

• I'm tired of being told one thing only to find out they meant to say the other. Why can't just be honest and open?
• I'm tired of the rich white guys taking advantage of people in 'developing' countries. Off shoring, partnering or whatever you like to call it is now the 21st Century version of the slave trade. Let's be honest here, companies don't choose these countries to move to because they do anything we couldn't learn to do. No we go there because it costs less and most of that cost is wages. I get the business imperative in that but I despair of the moral imperative. If I live in Bulgaria and put electronic components into a gizmo why should I be paid 25 euro a day there instead of 225 if I did it in Birmingham or Brisbane? The response is usually 'but their standard of living is so much lower'. Damn right, have you seen living conditions and social welfare, the medical and public transport systems in Eastern Europe, parts of Asia and Africa or India and Pakistan? Give me a break! 
• I'm tired of social injustice. The once favored dictators now the devil incarnate, the turning a blind eye to hideous practices because it's 'cultural'...bullsh*t, if it's wrong it's wrong 
• I'm tired of so many people living in poverty. It's a fact we all have the power to stop it continuing, what we lack is the will.
• I'm tired of hospital waiting lists and wards lying empty in this country. This is Australia, damn it. We are one of the richest countries on God's green earth and it is simply money and politics that accepts that a low income person with a painful hip might wait up to two years to have the operation. IT DOESN'T HAPPEN IN CUBA...
• I am tired of a military response still being the automatic reflex to conflict by America. Obama asked for the clenched fist to be open, he still clenches his. The conversation is overdue.
• I am tired of the negativity in politics and the bottom line, lowest common denomination politicians we have. 
• I am tired of being treated as invisible because I have passed a perceived use by date. 
• I am tired of bills getting higher and it's not because things are better, it's because management and infrastructure have been poor
• I'm tired of CEOs and their obscene bonuses
• I am tired of sexism in the media, especially advertising
• I am tired of 'women's' magazines and the banality of their content and the stupidity of those who purchase them - if you want to read untruths buy a novel and support the hundreds of authors and publishers who struggle for a living.
• I am tired of bad manners and discourtesy. I am over the disappearing excuse me and the ever widening yawn. I could scream and the 'doof doof' of too loud iPods, the raised voices on mobile phones and the drongos that cut in front of you on footpaths.
• I am tired of people confusing religious institutions with the actual faith.
• I am tired of atheists but I am also thankful because they usually give me a laugh.
• I am tired of young people bemoaning turning '30' and anyone who take birthdays for granted 'ah it's just another day'. This is the day you, from the millions of others who didn't,were born. It is an incredible event and an amazing privilege that it happened to YOU and to dismiss it or take it for granted is an outrage. You don't have to have a big party every year but goddammit you damned well better be grateful and humbled by the fact that it is your birthday.  
• I am tired of America's addiction to firearms
• I am tired of institutional racism, war, asylum debate, calling ourselves a white anglosaxon country are all based in racism
• I'm tired of being asked 'how's your day been so far?'
• I am tired of sadness
• I am tired of debt
• I am tired of getting old, not because I don't love the experiences I notch up and value the privilege of every extra day. It's the aches, the lack of sleep, the impatience, the memory loss, the confusion, the relevance deprivation, the patronising, the failing eyesight, the assumption that because I'm an older man I might be dodgy if I smile at a child and especially I'm tired of the tiredness

So there it is. Every day I wake up is a gift. I mostly love being alive at this time in history and I most of all just love being alive. But I just wish some of the stuff in the list above were different and it would be something akin to bliss.

I hope you do to.