QUEENS, NY?Despite the barely-concealed aggravated groans of friends and family who have unfortunately known him for decades, an irretrievable failure of an area man repeatedly insisted that after a long period of struggle, the year 2014 will prove fantastic and personally fulfilling.

“My ship will come in,” stated the divorced, debt-ridden poster child for unrealized potential.

“He’s completely delusional,” said Elijah Hogan, who reluctantly described himself vaguely as a friend, sort of. “He thinks he’s going to get some kind of magical big break in his acting career, and it’s like, dude — grow up.”

“He keeps talking about what he’s going to do when he wins the lottery, which actually makes a sort of insane kind of sense because seriously — what other hope does he have at this point?,” postulated?Kayla Dervish, who only under repeated questioning finally admitted to being a distant cousin of the man who has relied exclusively on public transportation for the last twelve years due to his inability to afford a car.

“He tried to produce a web series, like, four years ago,” reported a friend who later revised himself to “more like a casual acquaintance, really” before finally downgrading the connection to “I barely know him.”

“And the best part is, that web series is still not still finished,” he added. “Are you kidding me? Uh, follow-through skills? Hello?” he added.

A group of people who agreed to comment to the press only under condition of anonymity reported that the man has the obnoxious and irritating tendency to frequently quote articles from major news publications out of a transparent and painfully shallow desire to prove to everyone how smart he is.

“I’d ask what he’s trying to compensate for, if it wasn’t so obvious,” commented one of the group. “Pretty much everything, I guess.”

Even worse are the man’s social networking updates, described by one person who has subsequently blocked the man on Facebook as “a desperate, infantile cry for attention.”

“My horoscope says 2014 will be a good year for love!” said the unjustifiably optimistic area man, despite repeated pleas from his therapist to put off all further attempts at dating in favor of first overcoming his life-long relationship-killing habit of emotionally shutting down and unconditionally acquiescing and deferring to whatever anyone asks of him, in any situation, until eventually reaching a point where he composes excruciatingly long messages and sends them to the increasingly diminishing number of people who are willing to put up with his highly dysfunctional, borderline sociopathic personality.

At press time, sources who wish they were not close to the situation reported that the sad man and his impressive state of denial were seriously considering starting a blog.