Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! It seemed like just yesterday that I was still off of work on Christmas vacation. Oh well.
This was a great Christmas with our Charlie. Last year, he kinda got that Christmas will come with presents, but this year he bought into the full Christmas season. We saw a bunch of Santas, and every Santa was told that he was a very good boy, and that he wanted the Paw Patrol Sea Patroller, Coast Guard Headquarters Lego, and a robot that walks. Full on little-kid-Christmas-mode since we woke up from our turkeycoma on Turkey Day.
Christmas was hectic as usual, bouncing from house to house on Christmas Day and coordinating the schedules of a dozen people, but we made it work and skillfully navigated familial politics by trading sanity for exhaustion. Christmas Eve we went back to our old church where I heard the worst sermon of my life. Not the worst Christmas sermon, I mean the worst sermon period, and it happened to be on Christmas. I’ve never wanted to walk out of a sermon before. I mean, I have, but never actually anticipated acting on it until this Christmas Eve. Not to put too fine of a point on it, but I will say to any of my friends or family who might be reading this contemplating seminary, if your Christmas sermon revolves entirely on singing songs in Burmese POW camps and preaching the loving story of Christmas to prisoners in Dachau on their way to being executed by Hitler, maybe warn me so I can stay home and play Lego with my 4-year-old instead of bringing him to your dumbass church.
Anyway, Happy New Year! I made some resolutions. I’m already struggling.
After all the turkey, ham, cookies, chocolate kisses melted and smushed on a pretzel with an M&M on top, pies, gingerbread, casseroles made with varying combinations of potatoes and cheese, a couple marshmallow-and-whipped cream desserts that adopt a liberal use of the word “Salad”, and all of the butter that it takes to create cover shots for Bon Appetit magazine, I’m 5 pounds over my target weight and my khakis are tight. So there’s that one.
I resolve to finish projects. For the first time since I added that one to my perennial Resolution list, I actually have evidence of progress. I am working on organizing my garage. Those that know me would hardly recognize my garage. I even parked a car in it. Twice! I made sawdust inside my garage. These are amazing turns of events. Also, I’ve got a POD burning about $300/month with all my garage junk in it, so I’ve got quite the incentive to finish out this project, which is incredibly, inexplicably, roughly on schedule.
So new for 2018: I resolve to check the national news less often. There’s very little on WaPo that doesn’t drive me absolutely bonkers. I literally O.D. on this stuff. For a historical timestamp, this is right around the time that our guano loco president bragged on Twitter about the size of his, uh, nuclear button. I read this crazy and start shaking; I feel ill. I feel tired and unable to focus my eyes. I’m exhausted, deflated, and still can’t turn away. It’s a bad relationship, me and the goings on in the world, so I have set out the goal to just not look at it. To take a step back. To just get my news, on the whole, from peripheral chatter. Yeah, I don’t believe it either. But to quote a great president via SNL, I have strategery.
It may be impossible to break my news habit, but I have three-pronged approach. First, I plan on writing more. I’ve already spent 30 minutes not looking at the news already. Success! Second, every time I feel compelled to pull up my WaPo or FT app, I will instead check the second greatest website of all time: Jalopnik. Now, I fully realize that I already do this, but now I get to add on a sense of Resolve whilst watching Ken Block drive sideways through San Francisco or watching Chris Harris drift a twelve million dollar Ferrari in an actual race. Third, I will read some sort of guitar-based article before I read any Washington-based article. Being that I haven’t played my guitar in, gee, a lil bit, this strategy will at least help revive my long lost guitar-based interests. As a bonus, I might learn something guitar-based. This is the idea, at least.
Oh yeah, and I made a racing sim.
Josh