The Nativity story showcases a segment where three magi follow a star and inevitably end up at the birthplace of Jesus. Curiosity leading them all the way and reverence for when they arrive.

This is a story that seems so appropriate on a day where we’ve launched a satellite that has the potential to see into the furthest reaches of the universe—right to its origins. Curiosity driving us to develop such a magnificent marvel and reverence for humanity when we discover something new.

It’s the reason I’ve set its progress as my homepage.

We are on the precipice of discovering a brand new story about the universe.

To be given a vision of what we’ve never had before.

That it’s Christmas Eve and I feel unbelievably blessed.

My children are still young enough that the magic of the season is very much alive and I can think of no greater gift than watching them.

I feel blessed to have the means of being able to provide them with the joys of the season:

A roof over their heads.
A warm bed to sleep in.
A house with decorations.
A Christmas Tree in the family room.
Ingredients to bake those cookies.
Food to eat.
Food to enjoy.
Presents to look forward to.
A kitchen to bake cookies in.
Two parents to spend time with.

Even though it doesn’t feel like Christmas this year, with so much of the togetherness and travelling stripped away (yet again), I still feel unbelievably blessed.

It’s the first Christmas where I actually appreciate everything I have…

and I’m completely…

and utterly…

unapologetic about it.

I have found my joy.

Whenever a new endeavour is on the horizon, the first leg of it will always seem artificial.

It’s a new way of working, thinking or being and it all feels a little forced. A little too different. Not something you would intuitively do.

It can be easy to slip back into the old ways, abdicating any current attempts with something that’s familiar. More comfortable.

But like the sailor who sets to sea for adventure, there’s never going to be anything new in familiar waters.

It starts simple.

Gets horrendously complicated.

Then you spend the remainder of your years making it simple again.

Gotta wonder how we manage to twist ourselves up so much in the first place.

The problem with the combination of experience, knowledge and self-reflection is the tendency to look back upon life’s decisions and regretting it all.

“If only I knew, how things would be different.”

Maybe. Possibly.

But the regret isn’t useful.

What is useful is going forward by identifying all those connections in the past and seeing how they manifest today. Once that’s done, then it’s time to rectify.

Nothing can be done for then, but something can be done for now.

Where do we even begin to understand the world around us?

While many completely underestimate the study of Religion, relegating it to nothing more than reading about myths and fantasy, it has a massive advantage.

It’s a key to understanding culture, including its language, rituals and symbolism.

The one thing you quickly learn is that Religion, much like culture, transforms. It does this through contact with others, ideas that are challenged from within and adapting when necessary. I always find it puzzling that there are those who would plant their feet in the sand in an effort to defend a moment in time as the moment from which we should never stray from.

The Catholic Church, for instance, is a behemoth and glacially slow to move, but it does. Yet, there are those within who feel it shouldn’t have left 1958 as that is what “true” Catholicism looks like.

But—things move and things change.

Our very nature asks us to give symbolism to just about everything and to abandon those symbols when they are no longer useful. Should a person not be able to keep up, they are lost. Confused. Completely uncertain as to what is going on anymore.

It’s in these moments, we need to break the veil into something real.

And the most real thing we can do is connect with each other.

People don’t lose their holiday spirit.

They don’t lose their sense of community;

their sense of belonging.

They remember that wisdom is hard earned;

and love is what makes the world go round.

That there is a life beyond themselves

and happiness is only real when it’s shared.

For whatever reason, Frederich Nietzsche has come into the timeline of my life again (having made a very brief appearance in my early twenties) and his work is sinking in.

Part of me feels I wasn’t ready for most of the thinkers I came across when I did—treating them as nothing more than intellectual fodder rather than a relationship of wisdom through my own life experience. And there’s something about his work that’s striking me now.

Specifically, the idea that we should have a love of our fate (amor fati). If we had to live our lives again, in the exact same way, with the exact same decisions and outcomes, how would we react?

How would we handle it all?

I think back to how I’ve handled life so far and the times I’ve handled things best are the times where I just let go.

When I tried too hard to have control, or felt overwhelmed, it was only when I could accept letting go that I made peace.

It was when I reminded myself about a bigger story that I could be free.

To push further, to enjoy more, to love deeply.

For years, I lamented the decisions of my younger self, spending hours in my head considering alternate timelines that could have been. But none of that is helpful, useful, or even remotely indicative of what could have been. It’s nothing more than daydreams of wish fulfillment.

Everything I could have and could want is here with me right now.

What greater joy can I find than that?

Maybe I really will learn to have a love of my own fate.

It seemed like forever ago that I had momentum for writing.

While I’m still doing a bit of work behind the scenes, the real challenge is working myself back into the groove. Life has been… well… good overall, but like all of us, just trying to make sense of our time and place right now.

It appears every time I feel a good flow happening, the rhythm of life changes once again.

This is something I’ve always had a hard time working against, which is why I’ve decided on an audacious goal for the new year.

While part of this may be attributed to nothing more than a mid-life crisis, I feel it’s been too long since I’ve really pushed myself. My modus operandi used to be working just outside my comfort zone, but that has collapsed over the last few years as I attempted to just stay afloat.

However, it’s time to get back out there.

Set new heights.

Actually make a concerted effort to push beyond boundaries I once thought were impossible.

Last year, I made a goal to write one million words in a year before the next decade of my life was done. I figure, giving myself ten years to get there would give me the time to build up stamina to make it possible. This used to be standard fare for the pulp fiction writers of the last century, so why not try for it?

Hence, next year I am making a step towards it.

I will aim to write 350,000 words from January 1, 2022 to December 31, 2022.

Doing the math, that word count works out to just under a thousand words per day. It takes me between half an hour to forty-five minutes to write that amount, so I have to clear half an hour in the day to make it happen. Very reasonable.

The push won’t be for the words, but the actual time and to hold me accountable, I’ll write about my progress as I go.

I consider this fun.

Maybe I should get checked out.

It’s that time of year where Wikipedia is making its pledge for people to donate and I’m here to admit something:

I’m a person that does.

Normally I donate and then broadcast a message to English teachers, generating their ire, but my slow recession from social media keeps me from doing so. While irritating the academics who can’t stand the site is a devious motivation of mine, my purpose for doing so is more than that.

The Internet was supposed to be the great democratizer of information. It was the place where nothing would be hidden and would offer free access to anybody on the globe who is able to access it. Wikipedia’s mission of providing that information as an open source concept (with a global peer review) seems to fit that mission better than any place right now.

It’s not behind a paywall.

It’s not run by algorithms that recommend articles based on malicious tracking and paid for advertizers.

It doesn’t hide articles based on browsing habits.

As an encyclopedia, it’s remarkable—worldwide collaboration and constant updates.

If you think about the encyclopedias of the past, they were great reference points. They were places you can go to get a gist of a subject and see if it sparked any further interest. It was a starting point for further curiosity and could lead you down many wonderful paths.

But they were limited in scope (you can only bind so many pages), heavy and expensive… especially if you tried to keep up with every edition.

And now we have it online, unlimited pages, for free.

That’s something I’m willing to support.