YONDER BREAKS

Today, Waverly was playing with puzzles. I mentioned earlier she is gaining an affinity for them, and I'm happy to say that, several months later, she is becoming quite good. (There's a proud father moment for you.) Anyway, today she pulled out a Minnie Mouse puzzle and started at it, but only with a few pieces out of the bag. "Daddy, I need help!" she kept saying, trying to force together the three pieces she had pulled out. "You need to dump all the pieces," I said more than once, which she promptly ignored...more than once. And again , as in other seemingly mundane instances of fatherhood, something profound was illustrated before me. She couldn't make the puzzle work without all the pieces, and certainly not with only a few. Of course she couldn't! Now imagine those pieces are excerpts of knowledge and experience -- maturity. How many of you, in your youth, said or did things you regret, having acted dogmatically on principles you t

Lately I've been scared to go street skating. It's mostly because of my age -- ramps don't hurt my knees as much as ledges and stairs do -- but also because of ability. Any skater will tell you he or she dreams of tricks at spots all the time. In fact, if you see a skater gazing longingly out the car window as you drive, it's probably because he or she noticed a good skate spot and is thinking of what he or she would want to do there. (That's a lot of "he or she," huh? I had a tough English teacher in college, so you'll like my grammar or deal with it!) I was walking to a kid's birthday party with my family (talk about a Dad move...kids' birthday parties have dominated our lives lately), and noticed this great ledge-to-gap in front of an apartment building. But finding the time to get there and skate it was tough, and so I was left only to my dreams. Manuals to gap, flip tricks and combinations of the two floated through my head like the clou

I had some more thoughts on my Embrace the Tangent post. This idea of starting a bunch of things but never finishing anything isn't a great way to live, let's be honest. Sometimes we have days like that, and the post was about giving yourself grace in that. But in the long run, it's obviously not going to lead to a productive life. A little focus is crucial, as well as a healthy does of planning (which I am inherently adverse to). This idea applies especially  to creative pursuits, which is counter to just about everything creative people are inclined towards. Finishing things is difficult, right? I'd love to know the number of novels that are started every year, compared the number that are completed. Thankfully, this was a lesson I learned pretty early on in my writing "career." I would start a screenplay, outlining and maybe even writing some pages; but then get excited about a new idea and start that, fully intending to just jot some ideas down and then

Have you ever had a day where you just can't get it together? Or even maybe just an hour that flies by because you were busy, but you aren't quite sure what you accomplished? As I'm writing this, I am on the tail end of starting a load of laundry, putting away some  of the dishes, dressing Waverly, making coffee, taking the coffee grounds outside to add to a sort-of compost, refilling the coffee bin that we use with new coffee, turning on the TV for Waverly so I can do some chores , taking out the recycling, and then remembering I never finished putting away the dishes so that I could clean new ones in the first place. One thing leads to another and before you know it, you've started about ten things and finished zero. Now I'm writing a blog, which I have to put down so I can complete at least some  of those tasks. Standby... Okay, that's better. Speaking of not finishing things, I actually started this blog about four months ago while encountering the sam

Parenting is inherently frustrating, right? Well, I think I may have found the most  frustrating thing, in case you were wondering what it is. The most frustrating to me at least (because everyone is different). I have noticed lately that my fuse becomes amazingly short, I mean clipped to the end, when I am trying to accomplish something and my kids keep interrupting. Maybe you can relate. Before stay-at-home parenthood was my routine, I remember watching a video of a couple of moms complaining that they never got anything done. Not even that they just never finished anything they wanted to, but making fun of the idea that it was even possible. I noted the commentary, but thought to myself, Yeah, but surely I can finish something, right? I'm a pretty smart guy; pretty resourceful...  But I set my ambitions low. I remember my first day on the job, actually, where my only goal outside of keeping Ellie alive was to do the dishes. That's it. (And I'm pretty sure I succeeded.)

Sometimes I write to work things out. Maybe that's obvious if you regularly read this blog , but I thought I'd state that because I'm about to get into some deep thoughts about money. I go back and forth about how I feel about money. I'm not really sure how  to feel about it, honestly. It runs the world really, especially this country. It dominates a huge portion of our lives, our thinking. Most of us want more, for various reasons: fun, leisure, stuff, travel, generosity. I can't blame anyone for that. But money also is the cause of a huge number of problems in the world -- or the love  of money rather. Still, greed is corrupting our nation from the top down, and we see it everyday. -- But godliness with contentment  is great gain.  For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it.  But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that.  Those who want to get rich  fall into temptation and a trap  and into many foolish and har