Twinkle Lights...

She wasn't sure exactly when she noticed the change. It had been a low level awareness for a few weeks before she really started paying attention. Probably around Epiphany. That was when most people took down their Christmas lights if they hadn't done it before. But this year it seemed like more people than normal were keeping them up for longer.

Mid-January came and there were still at least a half dozen in her neighborhood that still had them up. And then she started to pay attention when they were downtown. At least two or three condos in each building still had lights on their balconies.

If windows were open she would look quickly as they drove by, were the trees still up and lit too or just the outside lights? It had been a particularly wet January so maybe people just didn't want to do it in the rain. By the end of January this excuse didn't seem to make sense anymore.

Even in wet years people didn't keep their lights up for a month past Christmas.

Maybe it was a sign of how miserable the country was. Everyone seemed just tired of being mad at this point. Maybe the lights were making the people who lived in those houses happy still and they weren't ready to give them up.

February came and went and still the lights were up.

She was trying not to be judgmental about it. After all if it really was making them happy why should it matter to her?

Except it did.

Honestly, it was March. Christmas was long past. The crocus were blooming and the tulips weren't too far behind. Spring. Not Christmas. No need for Christmas lights. The purpose of lights at the winter holidays is to chase away the dark, well, the time change had already happened and the dark was leaving its own accord now so...

Then she would take a deep breath and remind herself that different people do different things. That if they wanted to leave their Christmas lights up all year it was their business not hers. Even if they were Christmas lights and by leaving them up through April now they weren't special at all. They were just lights at this point.

At least when people string them in their yards during the summer they called them fairy lights. And only kept them up for a few weeks while they had cookouts and bonfires and evening parties. They weren't Christmas lights because they had been taken down and then MONTHS later put back up for a different purpose. They were still special that way. How was anything going to be special if you kept them up straight through July?

But you know, maybe it was just a habit now for them. They were used to seeing the lights and to take them down the house would look so plain. We all go through that after Christmas, when the decorations first go up everything looks so festive and bright and maybe a little busy. Then when they come down there is a day or maybe two where the house just looks so drab and plain. And that's after only having them up for a few weeks. Imagine taking them down in August now that you were clearly used to seeing them all of the time. Maybe the thought was too much.

By the end of October she knew that it was a lost cause. At this point the early decorators were putting their lights back up. To take them down now would be ridiculous. And honestly in a few weeks they wouldn't stick out anymore. Everyone would be festive again and their year round lights would be totally appropriate.

It still bothered her just a little.

That nagging voice in her head.

The one she had only been half listening to.

The one that had been trying to tell her for almost a year that the lights were on but nobody was home...

Control...

My family has a history of addiction issues. I've talked about it before. Drinking, smoking, drugs, shopping, food, gambling, you name it we've got someone who struggled with it.

Brent says my addiction is fighting addiction.

Like I am hyper aware of anything I feel like I don't have control over. I watch my drinking very closely because I don't want to drink too much or too often. I am really careful around food issues because I don't want to eat too much or too little. I love little matchy games on my phone and will play them in stretches and then delete them when I realize that I've done nothing but play little matchy games for a stretch. When I quit smoking at 20 I took about a week and quit. And that was that.

I'm not saying I don't have bad habits, I so do. The food thing for instance, I'd love to get to a point where eating was just a natural thing that was done just in healthy balance for maximum benefit instead of what feels like a constant fight between what I should eat for health and what I want to eat because...cake. Same with working out. I would love to wake up with just the right amount of drive to be at the gym doing the perfect balance of healthy working out and then spending my day active enough to not undo it all.

But that's not happened yet. So I watch closely if my weight gets too high or too low or my working out gets too obsessive or too slack.

My addiction is fighting addiction.

If I get too much stuff it makes me feel claustrophobic. If I spend too much money I get nervous. (Possibly another reason beside the grief for the insomnia, a few bigger bills coming due right now and even though we can afford them, the part of me that remembers the first years, decades, of our marriage is still a little panicky) But if I stop spending money and become really miserly and tight then I feel like that's not good either. So I try to find some sort of balance line on what I spend and on what.

Should I be a minimalist? Or should I worry more about supporting local businesses and go ahead and by that hand carved thing that I am sure I really need even if I'm not sure what it actually is...

And if I have what feels like too much stuff I have to get rid of it in steps now because there have been too many times that I've panic cleaned and gotten rid of things that I wished I had kept. But in the fog of the moment I just wanted clean walls and cleared shelves.

And I know that right now a lot of my hyper vigilance around these things is related to Mom dying last year and two trips back to New Mexico within 6 months of each other. Nothing like being around family to see all of the potential avenues for addiction open up. And even if they aren't really having issues with it, you can see that it could be a problem, and then you wonder should you say something? Which of course is a resounding no. Because nobody wants to hear from a nosy family member that maybe they should be shopping, eating, gambling, drinking, hoarding just a little less....

So instead I internalized it all and brought it home to stew on around my own life.

My addiction is fighting addiction.

I need to be in control of my own situation.

I hate thinking anything outside of myself controls me at all.

Which is a control issues all to itself.

Which is a doom loop of too much self reflection.

Which could be solved with cake...

Wait! No! Stop it...

You know it needs a few rounds of Toon Blast!

*sigh*

Really, I've got it all together...

Brent also pointed out that I just do my own mental health counseling on my blog so...

You're welcome?

Five Months In...

For the last two weeks or so I've been battling one of the worst insomnia stretches I've had in ages. It's the kind where I'm exhausted but just cannot manage a full night's sleep. And when I am asleep I'm just inundated with full on nightmares at worst, or unsettled dreams at best.

Lots of family drama in the dreams. Not with Brent and Christopher, though sometimes they are there. Not as they are now, but when Christopher was little. And if they are there it's because someone else is telling me what I'm doing wrong in that moment that I desperately need to fix before the whole thing ends in catastrophe. Which, of course, the part of my mind that never shuts off quickly reminds me that Christopher is fully grown, this is in the past, so clearly I already fucked it up.

It's been lovely. 

And so I've been trying to figure out why my subconscious is so worried about all of this. Why now?

And I'm sure it's tied to my mother dying. I mean how could it not be? And I've settled on part of the reason why I'm having issues right now is because I was so braced and ready for the holiday onslaught followed by Mom and Dad's Anniversary that when I got past that I sort of felt like I was done. Which, of course, I'm not done. It's not like grieving has an end date. There is some part of it you carry with you forever. And you don't really know what is going to trigger it. I mean the other morning the song Convoy was on the radio and my brain went from that to a song about the Silverton Train from the same artist to thinking about how much my dad loved trains and that one in particular and then I was crying. It took about 5 seconds to process all of that and then poor Brent was looking over in the car wondering why in the world "Pigpen, this here's The Rubber Duck..." would make me cry. 

So the nightmares...

I think it's my subconscious trying to figure out where I fit now. I mean with Mom and Dad now both gone my birth family (as opposed to Brent and Christopher) has no center to hold it together. At least to hold me to it. I'm not like the majority of my family. I'm just not. We don't have a lot in common. We don't have much to talk about. If we met each other now we would be polite (as we were raised to be polite) but we wouldn't be friends. I have a relationship with one of my three nephews and my niece. That's really pretty much it.

I mean, obviously, I have a relationship with my sisters and my brothers, they are my sisters and my brothers, but it's just that. They are my sisters and my brothers. We don't have much in common beyond that. World views are different. Even memories of growing up are so different for each of us that it would be hard to find pieces that fit together to make one complete puzzle picture. 

And honestly I dealt with all of that ages ago. I am who I am. They are who they are. And it's fine. I left home really young. I set off to be different. They have decades together doing family things having family get togethers, family church times, raising their kids together that I don't have. I also know I have a reputation as the problem child and I kind of like it. Because it makes me laugh. For a lot of reasons. But I dealt with all of it along time ago.

But that was when Dad and Mom and then just Mom were still alive. 

There were ways of dealing with things because of Mom.

Now Mom is gone so the center isn't there.

So what is the new dynamic?

And I don't know.

So I think that's what is causing the insomnia and the bad dreams. My subconscious is cranking up things that I had dealt with in the context of Mom still being alive, and keeping that relationship together and now that it's gone? What changes? Does anything need to change? 

Well of course it changes. Everything changes. That's life. It's a constant state of change. 

Now to just get my subconscious to stop feeling the need to stress about it and just let what happens happen.

Easy right?

Sure. 

Time Traveling Through Facebook Posts...

Eleven years ago today I was watching President Barack Obama being sworn in for his first term as Bush the younger was on his way out.

Three years ago today I was watching President Trump being sworn in as Obama was leaving the building.

Two totally different feelings for sure.

I was super optimistic about Obama's first term. The things I thought he had a chance at getting done. The way the country seemed to be feeling the positive message of change from the end of Bush's term. Even my conservative friends were glad to see Bush leave.

That optimism was misplaced. McConnell was very successful in blocking a lot of what Obama wanted to accomplish over both of his terms. Which was incredibly frustrating, during the first half of the first term especially, because there were majorities and Dems could have run the table with legislation. But they didn't. They tried to get buy in from the Republicans. Who not only didn't give it, they then said that what was passed was forced on them without any input... which is a lie. It just is. It's a lie that has been repeated so many times that people believe it to be true, but the facts don't support it. No matter how many times you've heard it.

There were also things that he didn't tackle that I wanted him to. And things he did that I disagreed with. A lot of people on the opposite political spectrum than I am like to pretend that we all thought Obama was perfect and never criticized him for things he did that we felt were wrong. Again, that's not true. There was a lot of criticism. Especially around three areas, not getting a single payer system passed, not focusing on fixing immigration when he had the majorities (which ties back to how much time was spent trying to get buy in from Republicans when it was never going to come), and drone strikes. For me you could add (which you can see) frustration in his no drama style meaning he never ever learned that Republicans were dealing in bad faith with him. Constantly. He insisted on thinking reasonable people would be reasonable instead of seeing they weren't and wouldn't. It makes him a good person, and I do appreciate that, but it made his administration less effective.

(Also time to remind everyone that the Obama administration told members of Congress that the Russians were interfering in our election with the intent of supporting Trump and McConnell told Obama if he told the American people before the election that he would make sure to paint it as partisan lies and as the administration interfering in the election. He then, knowing about the interference, withheld Obama's Supreme Court pick from confirmation, essentially betting on Russia being successful in their interference. When you see him chafing at the nickname Moscow Mitch know that he earned it.)

When Trump was being sworn in and then gave the now famous American Carnage speech I was worried, I was feeling pretty pessimistic. I made a couple of posts about what I hoped he was successful at and what I hoped he failed at and well...my pessimism wasn't misplaced. So does that mean I should have been more optimistic in that this time I would be right?

We are three years in to his first term. What I hope will be his only term but I'm not sure it will be. He still speaks to the worst, and there seem to be a lot of them. And he somehow speaks in a way that makes those that don't like to believe they are the worst still feel okay voting for him, for the money. Which, as you know, I think makes them even more craven. If you are an unabashed racist and you are voting for Trump because of his racist views, well you're a piece of shit but at least you are upfront about it. If you are voting for Trump because he's a misogynist, same deal. If you are voting for Trump because you just want to see liberals cry, well there you go. You are just an asshole and assholes gonna asshole.

But if you are voting for Trump knowing all of those things about him and say things like, "well he's not a good guy but...my money." Then you are willing to sell your morals out for cash and that makes you pretty damn awful. It means you have no core, it's all negotiable. You have no bottom. You have no line that cannot be bought and moved. You're trading your soul for thirty pieces of silver.

We've got just over 9 months until election day.

I'm pessimistic that the assholes are going to carry the day again.

I'm optimistic that people will vote him out.

It just depends on the moment you catch me.

For now we will watch the impeachment trial unfold and know that this circus was always going to end impeached but not removed and nobody's opinions changed as to who he is and what he's done.

So...

Just over 9 months to go. What happens this time? Optimism or pessimism?

Tick...tick...tick...

Well...

So this is my fifth blog of the year and it's the 18th. I can sort of see how the no goals thing is going for writing...

Just kidding.

Sort of.

I mean part of it is that I'm not really feeling any fiction right now. There just aren't a lot of full stories there. I have some ideas floating in my head for projects but nothing that I've committed to just yet. And the couple of times last week that I thought about writing something nonfiction they were pretty much angry rants which when I took a few deep breaths decided to let go.

Which I wouldn't have if I had a number like 13 or 14 staring at me from my page. Or a star I needed to get. But since I didn't...I let it go.

Listened to a podcast last week, or the week before, that talked about the damage we do to kids by giving them gold stars or rewards for accomplishments. The dangers of the star chart for chores. Basically we ruin their self motivation. We teach them that the reward is the reason for the doing instead of the doing itself.

Which I, of course, found to be really interesting.

But my parents weren't reward parents. I didn't get paid for grades. I didn't get a treat for cleaning my room. I didn't even have an allowance. You cleaned house and cooked and did laundry and in my case got good grades because it was expected of you. Not because you got something for it.

So how did I end up being star chart, goal oriented, treat motivated?

I have no idea.

But the podcast was interesting.

So anyway...

The no goals thing. It's been interesting. I realized that a lot of my day was driven by the things I had put "on the list." If there was a choice between two things for me to do the one that got me the star or closer to an overall goal was the one that got done. Which is pretty much a no brainer for anyone who knows me. But it's still been interesting to see how it's played out without those markers there.

Some good. Some bad.

I tend to get a bit obsessive about things. I know, you are all shocked right now. But it happens. So when I'm cleaning I might get sidetracked by trying to figure out how best to clean the dust out of a small space, or a spill on the side of the oven that would require moving the stove or getting a flat piece that I can wrap a thin cleaning rag around to get in there to add to the weekly cleaning, but will that really work or will it leave a smear I can't see? I think pulling it out and cleaning it might be best, but it's really heavy and can I do that on my own and not scratch the floors or would I need to make stove cleaning a weekend thing when Brent is home and....

See, the stars stop that. Because if I've got five other things that need done then I don't have time to obsess about things that really don't matter.

But then again, I also let things slide, like making sure I'm not accumulating trash. You know when you put something aside to deal with later; something needs a quick repair and you set it aside to deal with later or you aren't sure if you really need this thing that someone bought you but they bought it for you and so you feel like you should keep it so you set it aside for later...and then realize you have a lot of later things and haven't really budgeted any later time in your schedule.  So I've been dealing with some of that stuff this month.

So that's a thing the stars stopped as well, but not in a good way.

I'm thinking that like any habit when you are in the process of kicking it you are really aware of it and so in another month or so I won't really even be aware of star or no star, goal or no goal. But for now what I do or don't do is in the shadow of "is this a goal?" wait..."no goal!"

But I will try and get more consistent with writing even without a goal count.

Because I have to think you miss me....

(insert your favorite winky face emoji here)

Different...

There is a woman who I assume lives in the big apartment complex down the road from my house. I see her every once in awhile pulling out from one of the side roads. The reason why she sticks out is because she wears a black niqab. That's the covering that leaves just the eyes free. So black head covering, down to her shoulders which I can see the black there as well. Just the smallest slit for her eyes and so that patch of skin really sticks out.

But because she's one of very few women in this area that wear the full covering she sticks out in my mind.

Also because I'm never sure if she learned to drive recently so she's fairly new at it or if it's that the niqab cuts down on her peripheral vision a lot because she pulls WAY far forward at the stop sign and makes me nervous each time that she's going to pull in front of me.

And then I wonder what her day is like.

Because I see her for about 10 seconds every few weeks and I've already made some judgements about her based on that brief interaction. Like assuming that she's probably from someplace else and learned how to drive fairly recently. Though she could very well have been born and raised here and got her license at 16 just like I did. Well, 15 1/2 if she's like me, and I doubt she learned how to drive when her sister decided she should know how...at 12...But you get the point. She looks so different than the majority of people around me my mind pops her into that "other" box really easily.

And it's the niqab part that is really different. There are few women in my neighborhood and at my gym who wear hijabs. Much more common than a niqab. And I've only seen a full on burka once. And I admit, I did a double take.

So what must her day be like?

Because you have to think that the people like me, I noticed, I categorized, I chastised myself for staring and categorizing, are the most common but there is also the subsection that would say something. Portland has a reputation as a liberal bastion, but trust me when I tell you there is a nasty, nasty, underbelly here. It's very easy for me to imagine she faces a few ugly comments in her day, even if they are under someone's breath because we in the PNW are nothing if not passive aggressive.

And even if no one says anything there are those of us who do the double take, who stare a little too long. Who do what I did and make a bunch of judgments about her based on her clothes.

And sure a few of those are going to be correct judgments because her clothes are worn for specific religious reasons. Like I know that a man with a yamaka on is Jewish and a man with the side curls is Orthodox. There are signifiers in clothing and hair in different religions. Markers that set people aside.

But I still wonder how her days go.

Does she have to brace herself every time she leaves her house to face the double takes, the stares, the judgement on people's faces?

Are people kind?

That's really the biggest one. I think if I saw her outside of her car at QFC or someplace I'd make an extra effort to smile at her. To make her feel seen in a good way. But is that just as bad? I don't think so because I naturally smile at most people, I would just make sure that I wasn't withholding that smile because I was thinking about her clothes.

Because I'm afraid that there are people out there that do that to her.

I've seen the news articles about the uptick in hate crimes. The people who feel like somehow it's their right to say nasty things to people because they are dressed differently, practice a different religion, have a different skin color. I've seen the nasty bumper stickers from people who freely wear their hate on the outside. I've read the Facebook posts and comments from people who think that somehow someone else being different is a harm to them.

So I think about her and how her days must go.

I hope I'm worried for nothing.

I hope she sees more smiles than distrustful looks.

I hope she deals with kind people more than not.

Just like I hope that for everyone else.

No matter what they are wearing.

Not Unexpected...

So last night I started seeing the headlines about the Golden Globes; I don't watch because all I really care about is what people are wearing and I can find that online the next day. The awards themselves are decided by a really small group of people (The Hollywood Foreign Press) so it's kind of like the dudes down the street decided to put on a show about their favorite shows. Okay, great, but that's just like your opinion man...

I also don't support Ricky Gervais. I think he's mean and mean to people who could use a hand up instead of a push aside. So I don't need to watch him do his "naughty boy" routine.

But when I was reading the headlines the one that kept standing out was about Gervais telling the audience that nobody cared about their politics so they should just keep their opinions to themselves. I told Brent this morning that I was looking forward to a day of seeing people unironically post links to that sandwiched between their hottakes on the situation in Iran and if Jeffrey Epstein killed himself and the latest reaction to the Twittier In Chief.

I was not disappointed.

Or maybe I was.

I was right. And yet still disappointed. Which I hate. I want to enjoy being right. It's usually my favorite.

I've talked about it before, I don't buy into the "shut up and sing" or "shut up and act" mentality. If you want to just sing and not talk politics, that's cool. If you don't want to mention your personal beliefs and just thank your agent when you win best actor that's also cool. But if you feel like you want to share something? Go on ahead. It's your 2 minutes. Or whatever time they give you.

I also think it's hilarious that the same people that will bitch about a political thank you speech and talk about how we don't care what celebrities think will post a five minute Matthew McConaughey speech where he talks about god. So wait, do we care what celebrities think or don't we?

And then just the added head thunk moment of posting about a celebrity telling other celebrities that we don't care what celebrities think and applauding that celebrity for it...uuhhhh....

But not unexpected.

Which is sad.

I get it. It's tough when the politics of a performer make you not enjoy them in a role anymore. When you can't get past their personal to detach enough to enjoy their art. It happens. Separating art from artist is tricky. Sometimes I can. Sometimes I can't. But that's my issue not theirs. If I can't take Clint Eastwood seriously in a movie after watching him talk to an empty chair at the RNC a few years ago, that's my deal. He still had every right to talk to that empty chair. And he's still going to make right wing tilted movies that people don't acknowledge as such because it really wrecks the Hollywood is only left and if you aren't left you don't get to work! (That and Patricia Heaton's string of sitcoms, but you know, only the left in Hollywood can get work, it has nothing to do with if you are talented or not)

But again, that's their right. Free speech. They get it too. No matter how much money they make. No matter what jobs they hold. None of that matters. You get to talk about what you want to talk about and deal with the repercussions or lack of repercussions as well. Clint Eastwood doesn't gives a rat's ass that I won't be seeing his last movie. I guarantee it. And I don't want him to stop talking about what he believes. Again, not that he cares, I think he gets to do that.

Just the same way that I get to do this. And post on my Facebook page. And rant at Brent (poor Brent) and debate with Christopher (his mother is so square) and try not to lecture my friends (though I sometimes fail and I know I should be sorry about that but...)

But once you are a celebrity you get a bigger stage. If you sing you have your audience at your concert. If you are an actor you have interviews and yes, awards speeches. You have a big audience. You have a big platform. People are listening to you. You get to decide what that means for you. What you have to say. What you feel you need to say.

If I ever get to be famous and I get a big audience and I don't use my platform to try and make the world a better place then please post the link to this blog and tag me.

Maybe with a pithy title like, "This NOBODY tells FAMOUS person that SOMEBODY cares about their opinion!"

I mean, yeah, sure, it's just me that cares, but I care very deeply so...

We all get to have opinions. We all get to share those opinions. Don't let someone shame you into being quiet. No matter how famous you get.

And as a quick link for what fame can do, Celeste Barber is a comedian from Australia. She has a huge international audience and lives in a country that is currently facing devastating fires. Instead of being quiet and thinking nobody cares what a celebrity thinks or does she posted a fundraiser and as of right now it's sitting at over $25 million raised. Celebrity. It can make a difference.

War?

Two nights ago Christopher and Brent were in the basement setting up to play Days Gone. Before I headed down to watch I got the push notification that the US had killed Soleimani in a drone strike. I sighed and thought, here we go again, and then headed down to see the work Christopher had been doing.

After we had played (or more accurately Christopher played and we watched since games have gotten exponentially harder since the days when we actually played video games) for awhile and we got to see the way the game worked and a couple of the missions that Christopher specifically had worked on we shut it down. Then Brent and Christopher looked at their phones and saw the notification I saw earlier.

Brent read it and closed the story pretty much the same way I had. Christopher was stunned. He wondered if we were now at war with Iran, he was devouring all of the news he could read. And I think he wasn't sure why we weren't. Why I hadn't even mentioned it when I saw the story.

The next morning I was thinking about it again and Brent and I talked about it at breakfast. For Brent he just didn't have enough information to form a reaction just yet. For me going to war with Iran was expected. I told Brent back last summer when Trump declared that the IRG was a terrorist organization he was doing it give himself more power to attack them. If they are terrorists instead of the standing army of a country then it's like ISIS or Al Qaeda, much more leeway. So I had been expecting something. Some strike. And honestly we've been at war for so long, undeclared but ongoing, that this is just opening another front. I'm not sure that much changes, except we send back troops that we were supposedly withdrawing and Lindsey Graham is even more of a Trumpstan than normal.

But for Christopher he doesn't remember the start of the last cycle. He was really young when 9/11 happened. He wasn't much older when we invaded Iraq. His life has been a constant background drumbeat of war in the Middle East but there have been no "THIS IS WHERE IT STARTS" moments. For him this seems like a bigger deal.

And it might be.

Or it might just be the continuation.

And, again, for me it was inevitable. The Trump administration pulled out of the Iran Nuclear Deal, they hit them with sanctions again, they declared the IRG terrorists, they hit them with another batch of sanctions and then Trump got impeached. So they really needed this. Historically Americans don't like changing leadership mid-war. So a new war means another notch for his 2020 bid.

But historically Americans tend to line up at war time and get very USA! USA! and I'm not sure we are going to see that this time.

A huge chunk of the American public does not believe the Trump administration when they say that they HAD to take him out because he was about to do something big. They haven't earned that trust. Brent says they need to release their proof pretty quickly to get backing, I'm not sure that that will make a difference. After all the same talking heads are making the rounds right now saying we had to do this as were making the rounds saying we had to invade Iraq because they had proof of the WMDs. You remember those right? The ones that didn't exist?

So I think the trust in the government as a whole is too shattered for buy in.

But it won't matter if or when Iran retaliates. We'll still be at war. Again. Still.

I wish I didn't live in a world where that seems normal to me.

Goals? We Don't Need No Stinking Goals...

So normally this would be the blog where I listed out what my new list of goals is. Normally.

But this year I'm not doing goals. I'm goalless.

I was starting to feel it last year about mid-year. Actually I was feeling it two years ago and talked myself out of it going with MAJOR goals instead. But then it hit again. I just wasn't getting the charge out of hitting numbers for things. Which totally makes sense considering I make those numbers up. It's all self motivated stuff. No rewards at the end except checking off those boxes. There had to be a time where that would fail to motivate me.

The fact that it took 50 years is pretty good.

I'm joking, but only sort of.

I've never really been outwardly directed. The things that other people seem to think are important have often failed me. In fact today there was some rando on the internet who was trying to insult a group of us by saying that he made thousands while we cried...Umm okay? I mean first off, making thousands is cute and all but you're an adult my age, if you are working you should be making thousands, right? I would have been more impressed if his insult had been well directed, well constructed and he had known the difference between your and you're. Those are the things I strive for.

Understanding.

Clarity.

And I don't really judge success or happiness on net worth. Net worth isn't worth much if you don't do some good with it.

So anyway, I make up my own goals. How many books I want to read, how much I want to write, how I'm going to take care of my health, what new things I want to experience. I've done picture of the day and a public daily gratitude off and on for years as well. Little weird things that I find interesting and keep me striving for something.

We also call it making up games.

I've made up games all of my life. Most of you have played them, even if you didn't realize at the time that you were. I can make almost anything a game. With a soundtrack. It's the way my head works.

So to channel that over the years I've set goals. Things to work towards. Milestones to hit. But not this year. This year I'm not doing it.

No stars.
No numbers to reach.
No blank pages waiting to be filled.

Oh wait, no blank pages? Well. Okay, so maybe some blank pages. I mean I still have to do things. There are still things that have to be taken care of and if I don't write them down I'm not as likely to remember them so I still needed a calendar to track them. But not a big thing like I've gotten in past years. Just something with a little space on each day to write down some notes. But not a goal system or anything...

So back in September I bought my calendar for 2020. You know, right after my mother died and I was feeling a little adrift but really sure that 2020 didn't need to be anything elaborate and I bought...

No, not the slim one of the left, the fat one on the right. Yep, a more elaborate tracker than I've been using because....Reasons?

It has pages for each day of the week and a combined weekend page. With space for hourly schedule tracking and long to-do lists. There are spaces for evening thoughts on how the day went, and a space for gratitude. It's the most elaborate tracker I've ever owned. And I thought about returning it. I mean clearly I bought it when I was in a funk and it's not how I'm viewing this year so...

But then I thought, well, I still need a place to write down my schedule. And I like all of the motivational quotes. And the space for writing down gratitude is nice since I was thinking I'd go back to not posting a daily public gratitude post. And...so...I kept it. And I've filled in a few things. Not goals, just things I need to do.

And then there's reading. I mean Goodreads does their yearly challenge and I already have the first two years they did it and I wasn't using Goodreads, or hadn't realized that they did a challenge, or something but anyway they are just listed as ugly years instead of pretty completed badges. So I can't really leave that blank because I know it will make me mad later. So I need to put in a placeholder.

I went with 12. Not really hard to reach. I also decided that each time I finished a book over 12 I would add to the number so basically it's not a goal per se, but it will track.

And of course there is health and fitness. I mean I'm not going to stop going to the gym just because I didn't get a star. And I still need to figure out my weight. Like either how to get rid of the excess or find peace with it. But that's not a goal, it's a lifelong bullshit struggle, but not a goal. And sure, there's dry January, but that's a game not a goal. And, okay, so, I am already thinking I might try an anti-inflammation elimination diet in March to see if I can help my joints that way, but those aren't goals...

And writing, well, I'll write when I want to, man...Even though there is a part of me looking at the binders I've set up for 2020 and thinking I have a spare one that I could use to print off either Muse or Practical Magic and look at those again. With no blog quotas maybe this is the year I see if there is a book in there? But that's not a goal, that's just a wonder.

Brent gives me until the spring before I've set up lists again. He's pretty sure I am already setting goals and just calling them something else and will admit to it in the spring or early summer.

I say I can go all year without setting a goal, just watch me! Wait...that's not a goal right? That's just a wait and see to you? Yeah, that's it.

I've also set up my 2020 pages that I use to track everything, I've just left the "average needed" and "end number" spaces blank. So if I write a fiction piece there is a space for the tally, but not a required number of tallies. And if I submit a piece to a contest there is a space to mark it, but not a required number of marks. See? Totally not goals.

So this year I'll be keeping track of my schedule, writing, reading, doing cool things, working on my health and not setting any goals.

Goalless but not aimless.

Let's go 2020!