Lame Duck Week

Christmas and New Years are a week apart to the day. To me this week is unlike any other during the year.

I'm in my office. None of my six coworkers are here. I'm not listening to Christmas music, like I have been for a few weeks straight. I'm working on my schedule for next year.

This is a lame duck week. It's a forgone conclusion. 2010 has started, but the calendar still says 2009. I'm ready for the new year, with its new opportunities and its fresh start. But I'm still in this year, with its thoughts of failure and "what could've been".

There are many changes I want to make in 2010; changes to my daily, weekly, and monthly routines. However, my attitude is "it's still 2009, I'll start those next week."

Why do I need checkpoints, landmarks, and turning points to improve myself? Why can't I change now? No, I rely on artificial time markers as if they, themselves, are what makes me improve.

I do. I do. I don't.

Was I ever meant to understand love? I can't wrap my mind around how one becomes selfless. I am so selfish. I cannot forfeit my own needs and wants to benefit someone else.

A famous writer once wrote that he did not understand what he does. He doesn't do the good he intends and fails to do the good he knows. He has no control over his actions.

I relate to that more than anything I can think of relating to (...in which to relate). So I identify with him. Now what? What are the steps to dealing with this problem or solving this situation?

I'm stuck in this cycle and don't know the proper way out. I can't think of a way to not end that with a preposition.

Christmas Presence

I've gotten into Christmas more this year than ever. The past few years I told myself I would really contemplate the true meaning of Christmas by by the third week of December I fell into the excitements of presents and stuff I'm getting.

I'm one of those people that likes to blast Christmas m

usic on the drive home from Thanksgiving, before it is even December. I've got every Christmas song released by Sufjan, Relient k, as well as a hefty collection of old school tunes (like Bing Crosby, Ella Fitgerald, Nat King Cole, Sinatra, Elvis, etc.), and some Charlie Brown representation.

We're at the start of week two, and all is calm, all is bright. I'm looking under my tree, seeing a dozen gifts wrapped in red and green paper. I'm fighting the urge to bend down and read who they are for, not to mention picking them up and shaking them. I've already been warned by my wife not to do that.

To me, Christmas is the celebration of Christ's birth--the signification that God loves us so much that he gave up the perfection, purity, and awesomeness of heaven to come down here to chill with us. Big deal? Yes. Coming to earth, Jesus faced all the imperfections this world has to offer--sickness, hunger, tiredness, betrayal, temptation--in a word: sin.

Yet, he never screwed up. I screw up all the time. But he didn't. That's why I get to celebrate Christmas.