Mountains Made Low

People, it seems, often harbor a strong dislike for one holiday or another. Some people loathe Christmas, others Thanksgiving, and still others one of the many holidays that we mark on our calendars. Their reasons for these dislikes are many and varied, and most times, people have very good reasons for disliking the holidays they do.

If you’ve read here a while, you know that I’m not a strong proponent of the “Hallmark Holidays,” generally speaking. That comes and goes, and I can’t say that I actually dislike them, because they’re, honestly, easy enough to ignore when you want to; they simply are what they are, and there’s really nothing surrounding them to hate, at least from where I stand.

And those who know me know that I love Hallowe’en, I love the patriotic holidays (Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Veterans’ Day), I have a profound respect for Thanksgiving, and it’s impossible for me not to get caught up in all that Christmas signifies.

But here’s another of those places where I’m a little weird: I hate New Year’s.

With a passion.

Do I have good reasons? Well, I think so, but as such things always go, I don’t know that I’m qualified to judge my own reasons behind this feeling; so often, after all, we’re not. But let me explain, and I’ll let you be the judge.

I trace the roots of my loathing to when I was a kid. These roots have much more to do with New Year’s Day than with New Year’s Eve, which is more the focus of my adult feelings, but I know I started hating the whole Eve/Day complex when I was a child. And it has to do with food. Think about it: Most holidays bring with them a veritable smorgasbord of good eats, from cookouts at the summer holidays to traditional Thanksgiving and Christmas fare, to candy on Hallowe’en, to (as an adult) green beer on St. Patrick’s Day. But what does New Year’s bring?

Sauerkraut.

Really? I’m not a huge fan of pickled anything — jalapeños come about the closest, though I’d still much rather have fresh. But pickled cabbage? Again, I ask: Really?

And the traditional kraut (along with, typically, pork roast cooked in the kraut) was de rigeur on New Year’s Day in my family growing up.

So that’s the root. I know, though, that sauerkraut alone is not reason enough to hate the holiday. Just duck the kraut and all’s well, right?

No, not really. Not so much. Because of the other things that this holiday visits upon us, at least upon me, that I don’t find festive at all.

First of all, it marks the passage of time. Okay, okay, I know I don’t hate my birthday, which is a much more personal marker of time’s passage. But that’s precisely because it is personal. New Year’s marks the impersonal passage of time: Time marches on, and all that. It does not, like a birthday, mark that time has passed for a specific person, but that time has passed for the whole world. When my birthday rolls around, in May, I can look at the year that has passed, and know that a year has passed for me. New Year’s reminds me, though, that a year has passed and would have done so with or without me. I know that I am small and largely insignificant, but I can do without the reminder. And the fact that a year has passed with little change in areas of my life where I cannot change things alone — well, that’s just no fun at all.

Second, it is the one time of year that encourages us all to pause, take stock, and reflect. To make resolutions about the things we want to change in our lives. This bothers me. I do this all the time, year-round, on a continual basis, and perhaps even too much. The past three-plus years, in particular, have been a time of pretty much non-stop reflection, growth, change, and (I think) improvement for me. As first 2008 and then 2009 dawned, I still, though, made resolutions. And I did well enough by them (no need to recap, because this is part of what I’m on about here). But I’ve spent so much time working on myself in those years, that I don’t feel any special need to pause, reflect, resolve on the 31st of December, anymore. As someone put it to me, about me, a week or so ago, “You know who you are, and you’re proud of who you are.” I’d never thought of it in quite those terms, but I suppose on the face of it, it’s true enough. Also, though, part of who I know myself to be and who I’m proud to be is a person who reflects, takes stock, and makes changes all the time. So I don’t want a day for that, particularly a day tied to the passage of time, on which it becomes apparent just how little difference all I do, and all I have done, all that I am proud of in myself, makes to anyone outside of me. I am, that is, happy with and proud of, though not complacent about, the changes I have made in my life — that’s within myself; outside of that, though, it’s clearly not yet change enough.

Finally, though, the whole thing just rings false to me. This New Year’s Day, this day of “new beginnings” or “positive change” is really just (this year) a Friday. Nothing really changes. I’ll be back in the office on Monday, doing the same job — no matter that it’s a job I love. I’ll be hanging out with the same group of friends on Sunday night — no matter that they’re all people I truly like. And my life will go on as it has for nearly 35 years: moving from one day to the next, looking at what’s going on around me, examining (in minute detail) everything that happens — that I say, that I do, that I am — believing, mostly, that it is good, and wondering if it is ever good enough. And receiving feedback that confirms both my belief and my fears, in pretty much all areas: Good? Yes, definitely. Good enough? Well…. Because it’s just a Friday, and nothing changes.

Well, maybe a few things change. Here’s the deal for me on 31 December 2009: No resolutions, and no bottle of bourbon. I need no resolutions for 2010, because my life and the way I choose to live it are an ongoing resolution, and one I am happy with my progress toward. And unlike the 31st of December in 2006, 2007, and 2008 (for the clearing out of recent memory and exorcising those particular ghosts), I realize this about my life. I may still decine all social invitations, because I’m — simply put — a big ball of no fun to be around on New Year’s, and I may still spend the evening with my PlayStation and/or the DVD player and my little grey roommate, and that’s probably best for all concerned. I will not, however, be getting smashed on Beam white label this year (or anything else). And I think there’s as much realization in that as in anything: Today, New Year’s Eve, and tomorrow, New Year’s Day, are each just another day. Days to get the laundry done, the trash taken out, the house cleaned, some work for the upcoming semester done. Days neither to be celebrated, nor to be lamented based on “newness” or the lack thereof.

Some things change. Some things don’t. What changes on January 1st is nothing more or less than what could change on any day of the year. That’s how it works; that’s what I’ve learned this year. And I don’t need to lament the snail’s pace of change that I would like to see, to let the arbitrary marker of change influence what I know, what I believe, and how I feel about myself. Things that I would and can change will happen as I make them; things that will change on their own due to outside events, my own desire and contribution, and the desire and efforts of others will happen as they do. January 1st is only a day; it is not, in itself, an agent of change.

Except when it comes to getting a new calendar.

I got back, on Saturday, from a two-day excursion to the Hocking Hills, where I’d rented a cabin for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day for my family. I got there and checked in on the evening of the 24th, and my parents arrived around 1 (AM!), after attending the “late” (8:30pm) service at their church. My sister, brother-in-law, and the kids arrived around 5 on Christmas day, after spending Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with my brother-in-law’s family. We did the gift exchange (best of this year: two positively ancient books from Mom and Dad; still didn’t top last year, though I’m not sure that anything ever can or will), watched a movie, and ate the traditional Christmas French toast on Saturday morning; then we went for a brief hike at Ash Cave, as a group. (It’s nigh impossible to go to the Hills and not hike at one of the caves, or Cedar Falls.)

Then, of course, we all loaded up and went our separate ways: Me back to Fremont, my sister and brother-in-law back to Nashville, and Mom, Dad, and the kids to Wooster where the kids are spending the week, as they do between Christmas and New Year’s every year.

It was a pleasant couple of days (except, of course, that the cold I got was NOT on my Christmas list).

Here’s the thing, though. My sister’s kids are growing up; they’re 12 and 10 now, in the 6th and 5th grades, and those are interesting ages, because they’re now pretty well along into developing their own personalities, likes, dislikes, quirks, twitches, and — most importantly for this story — senses of humor, which I’ll come back to.

This kind of makes me sad, because while I’ve been the one declaring loudly for the past year or so to anyone who would listen that they’re not little kids any more, I realized this past weekend that they’re fast turning into real people — real people whom I like, whom I love, but whom, because of time and distance, I don’t really know any more.

But it kind of made me happy, too, because of one gift I got from my sister’s family — a gift that my sister was quick to point out that the kids had picked out for me. This particular gift shows that the sense of humor — off-the-wall and outlandish as it may be — that our family pretty much shares is coming along quite nicely in the next generation. It was simple, and funny. Only a t-shirt from Wal-Mart, but it showcased the kids’ burgeoning awesomeness nonetheless. A picture of a mushroom with the caption, “I’m a Fun Guy!”

Yep, those kids are okay!

The following is from Lindsay, with permission. It’s her take on Penny Arcade’s holiday charity program, Child’s Play. There are links to the Child’s Play site (and their “About” page) in the post below, and I’ll give a shout out to the charity’s nuts’n'bolts/making-it-work partners, Amazon and PayPal, here.

Lindsay writes:
…it’s that time of year, again. Yes, the time of year where there’s a holiday approaching called Christmas, where kids wake their parents up early and are obnoxious until they get to open their presents. The day kids await for weeks with baited breath.

Unfortunately, there are kids that aren’t as lucky. Kids that don’t get to jump on their parents’ bed until they begrudgingly get up; kids that are lucky if they have the strength to get out of their hospital bed.

Now, all you nerds with soft hearts can help, if you didn’t spend your last dollar and change on a 2-liter of Mountain Dew. I don’t like charities — unfortunately, donations to a great many charities often never reach the people you intended to help. However, there is one that is much, much different.

The nerds over at Penny Arcade run a drive every year called Child’s Play to get presents into the hands of kids in children’s hospitals across America and Canada, and even a few hospitals in the UK, New Zealand, and Australia. You can donate locally, or internationally — your choice. You can donate cash, or you can click the hospital you’d like to donate to, and it will redirect you to that hospital’s Amazon Wish List. You buy the stuff, Mike and Jerry from Penny Arcade help pay for the shipping, and sick kids smile on Christmas day. It’s not rocket science.

If you’re still feeling a bit leery of the idea of donating to a charity, here’s the “About” section of their site – go read about them for yourself. If you’re feeling charitable, send a book or a toy or a video game to a hospital. I’m not going to tag anyone specific in this note; I don’t care if you donate or not. But, if you want to donate, I’m telling you that this is the place.

I finally sent my Christmas list out to my family this morning. The funny part is, I had a hard time thinking of books to put on it. This is a big screaming deal, since Mom is a bookstore manager, and buying me books for Christmas (and my birthday) is, generally speaking, part of her plan. I did come up with a few to put on the list (the first three of Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden books, for example), but I noticed that I didn’t have much that I actually wanted to put on the list this year, and — in particular — I didn’t have any heavy, academic tomes to add. For someone who’s made the family go, “WTF?” in the past with such requests as the Liddle-Scott Greek Lexicon (a huge volume) and the two-volume Complete Works of Aristotle, this is a new and different feeling.

In part, it has to do with the fact that I’ve got the new books from three authors I really like who published in October and November this year — Under the Dome (Stephen King), Breathless (Dean Koontz), and Her Fearful Symmetry (Audrey Niffinenger). And it part it comes from the fact that my reading habits have really taken a nose dive in the second half of 2009 (were you wondering why I haven’t been keeping track of that New Year’s Resolution or posting about books any more?).

I have been reading some, again, lately, though. I’ve been on a sort of nonfiction kick. Or as I admitted to a friend the other night, I’m actually on a “people behaving badly and then writing about it kick.” I recently finished Tucker Max’s I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell (Tucker Max is a fair writer who’s built his writing career on the back of having lived some quite humorous stories), and have since moved on to Chelsea Handler’s My Horizontal Life (some 40 pages in, I’m not quite sure what to make of Handler, yet: Knowing that she’s a comedian in addition to her writing makes it hard to know what’s cynicism and what’s sarcasm in her work, and I’m having a difficult time with what’s funny because it’s true, much of which would then be funny and very sad simultaneously, and what’s funny because she wants to be funny, much of which is apparently not coming off in print; but we’ll see).

But I do know that today, I am getting written — and listening to oral — book reports from my developmental reading students. As a sample of what I’m looking for in the written report, I gave them all a slightly reworked version of what I wrote here about Arthur Nersesian’s Chinese Takeout. I remarked that when I talk about that class — book reports and vocabulary tests — I sound like I teach the 7th grade. And then I give them my analysis/review of a artfic novel as an example of what I’m looking for in the book report.

Yeah. This will go well!

Which, somewhat frighteningly, scans (in the poetic sense) just like “the 5th of November.” No gunpowder, treason, or plot here today, though.

Well, maybe.

But it’s been 45 days since I’ve written here at all. That’s a whole password change on my computer at work. That’s six weeks that some of you have appear to have been patiently checking back, if not as often, still sometimes.

I could, I think, legitimately claim “busy” as my reason for not writing: Teaching six classes, doing various administrative things, having (as one of them put it to me this morning) “actual friends” close-by again.

No excuses, though.

But today is the first day of the last month of 2009, and I got to thinking overnight. I was thinking about the blogging and lack there of, for various reasons, and I was thinking about a quotation from Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead; the character Howard Roark says, “My work done my way. A private, personal, selfish, egotistical motivation. That’s the only way I function. That’s all I am.” And I really started thinking about that.

That’s why, I think, that for two years I frantically blogged. And I do mean frantically: I averaged more than one post per day for over two years. Some of the things I wrote were somewhat deep, some were mostly drivel, and some were mostly uninteresting as I talked about books I was reading, movies I was watching, women I was (mostly not) dating. I get that.

But, though a number of people read here almost as religiously as I wrote, and though I knew who some of those people were/are, I mostly did this for me. So when people, readers, told me that they only skimmed the stuff about books and movies, I said, “fine” — it was no problem for me — and kept right on writing those things.

So why did I stop, or pause, or take a break, or go on hiatus though continually promising that I was not doing, and would not do, those things?

Because I got to a point where I was honestly and actually living my life according to the principle by which I had blogged for the previous two years. I had found the place — and it’s not about the new position, about the administrative aspect of that position, about being “in charge” of anything (and those who have done any academic administration know that there is precious little “in charge” to go around) — the place in which it is possible to do my work my way.

I’d been slowly coming to terms with that through my first year here. Part of that coming to terms had to do with the fact that I was forced to rethink some things that my education had pounded into me. Part of it had to do with the fact that it was just uneffinbelievable. I had come to believe, on some core level, that the place in which I could be me and do my work did not exist. That I might be better picking up the hammer and going back to swinging it for a living.

But I found the place. And once I started to believe that, I didn’t quite so much need this space in order to maintain my sanity. I do, though, miss this space, and it’s due for more than just this visit. It’s due for a refit; it’s due for an update. It might even be due for new technology.

But it’s probably due for a more stable, not to say staid, approach. The bottom line is, I can’t have this — in whatever form it ends up — be an all-or-nothing proposition. More measured. Less frenetic.

Because it’s still a space in which I can do my work, my way, and if anyone else is interested in going along for the ride, I’m happy to have them.