A Fond Farewell to 2016 and a Welcoming Hand to 2017

2016 was an exceptional year. At least for me it was. I know the collective world is groaning due to the insane list of beloved celebrities that passed on and the joke of a presidential election that took place. However, this year was personally gratifying.

This year started out rough in that I had to say goodbye to people whom I worked with and admired for years. Some died, others moved on to different jobs. I've had to say goodbye to friends, some cherished, others background characters. Some moved on to job opportunities while others moved on to much deserved brighter horizons. I've said goodbye to family members whom I just assumed would always be around. I've had to say goodbye to some aspects of my youth and aspects of my personality that no longer serve their purpose. I've said goodbye to old habits and hello to new ones. There were more goodbyes than I can ever remember having before.

The one event that sticks with me this year is starting nursing school. Despite how busy and stressful it is, I feel.....full. Full of purpose. Full of meaning and strength. Although it was not my intended goal, this is where I am now. I'm glad this is where I am. For once I feel like I'm driven by something real and tangible. Something I can really achieve and see through. Something meaningful. Something I love. I turned 30 this year and I can't say I handled it super well. Though it was an event surrounded by good company and good times, I struggled with saying goodbye to my 20's and a decade that symbolizes youth and energy. Both events seemed to tie into each other. They both made me feel like an adult. The adult I should be and not some lost, disappointing man-child. I also got in shape and stayed in shape for the majority of the year (Except December. It's never nice to my fat ass) This year also marked a dedication to health. Being healthy. Feeling healthy. Living healthy. I know, it sounds all terribly pretentious. But few things feel as good as feeling fit.

For once, I feel like I'm being propelled towards being the man I want to be. I feel like I've gained meaningful ground on being somebody. Although I feel like I've lost more friends and gained few in return I feel not so alone anymore. This is life. People change. Dynamics change in relationships. Shit happens. Shit gets broken. Shit gets fixed. The only thing you can do is roll with the punches because there is no going backward.

I can only unrealistically hope that 2017 is a year of similar prosperity and consistency. I'm not holding my breath. I'm not stupid. But hope is all I have when I can only control so little. I will strive to make this a good year and continue on with what I have and hopefully build towards what I don't.

This year was about growth. Perhaps this next year can be about stability.


Ok 2017, let's make the next 365 days worth recounting.

A Hat Too Far

Kids these days, am I right?!

Today I stepped out to the vast emptiness of holiday shopping to witness the bone chilling hollowness of commercialism gone awry. Christmas doesn't make sense to me. Today's youth doesn't make sense to me. Put them both together and I'm as confused as a lobotomized kitten in a sea of warm milk.

Anywho, today I saw not one but two members of today's youth sporting 2 hats. One hat resting comfortably upon their skull where it belongs and another fastened to a belt loop as if it where an open-carry pistol. A back-up hat? For what fucking reason would you ever need a back up hat readily available on your person? In case one hat didn't look "as fly" as you originally thought and changed to the one you thought might potentially be "dope as fuck" instead? Or perhaps you encounter a cute girl and get the feeling the Chicago Cubs hat just isn't her thing. Instead you slowly reach to your side and unholster your trusty Boston Red Sox hat to turn the tide, leaving nothing to chance in your strong hat game.

As a lover of all things hats, I agree with this trend in principle. In practice, this is dumb as shit. Perhaps if I were born in the far off year of 1998 or 99 I would be a valued subscribe of this back-up hat trend. I would never leave home thinking I wore the wrong hat again. But I grew up in a time where you chose the hat you were going to wear for the day and just dealt with the consequences of that choice, for better or worse. I'm an antiquated product of my time. Sure, I'd love to live in a world where I could just change hats in a pinch, on the go, in public, in an emergency fashion crisis.

But you can't teach an old dog new tricks..............or trends.

Time

Time.

It's our most precious commodity. It is ours to use and to waste however we please. It is finite. Whatever we use it for, we cannot get it back. Whoever we use it on, we cannot take it back.

We often worry about how much money we are spending, how we are spending it and where. Similarly, we don't worry that much about our time and how we spend it.

Like money, we sometimes spend our time foolishly. Perhaps with people who don't deserve a second more of our precious time. Unlike time, we can recover money by working harder or getting another job. Nothing in the universe allows us to gain back time, youth or moments wasted. Time is entropic. It keeps on being dispensed without our consent and leaves it up to us to keep up.

One of humanities most egregious flaws is how poorly we spend our time. We sometimes don't spend enough time with those closest to us. We don't always spend it with those whom we cherish the most and likewise cherish your time together. We don't always spend it on matters of the most importance personally, professionally nor globally. We don't usually spend it with those who would kill to have some of our time if only to enhance theirs. We are time killers. We use our time staring into our phones, staring into tv and computer screens, watching shows we have probably already seen......alone. We find silly games to play in the middle of "downtime" not realizing for a second that these seconds will never come again. That once these seconds happen, they are gone and and gone for good. We rarely take into account that one day, we ourselves will become old and will have wished for something better. We might have wished to have done something differently or to have paid better attention to someone/something else. We will never fondly remember the times we played a mobile app game while in line at the grocery store instead of calling a friend from out of state or a family member you've lost touch with. We will never fondly remember binge-watching a tv show for hours/days on end at the prime of our youth when we could have spent that time outdoors, falling in love, trying new foods, or being with family or friends. It seems we are doomed to not realize that all of the things we know and love are also finite and that their existence on this earth is just as limited as our own. Not everything and everyone will be here tomorrow.

Yet here we are. A race lost in screens. Lost in our own worlds of technology and denial. This isn't a call to live every day like it's your last as I have never subscribed to such an unrealistic and horrifically selfish philosophy. This is the call from someone who is akin to a financial advisor. Spend your time more wisely. While it is impossible to spend every second like it counts for something greater than yourself and the world at large; it is very much possible to spend our time knowing that we won't be here tomorrow with no guarantees of an afterlife where we see each other again like it's a high school reunion. We are all guilty of spending our time poorly.


Maybe tomorrow we can change that.

Almost Lost a Hat

At this point, my blog should be called "Hat's and Things: My Head Fashion Accessory Odyssey." But it won't be. I've had a few ideas to write in here that I simply neglect to write about. So instead, I bring you another hat post. Another glorious hat post. Enjoy, simple reader.

Last week, I almost lost my "special teams hat." If you've been reading my blog then you'll know that my "special teams" hat is strictly used for exercise, manual labor and fishing. I left it at the boxing gym I was at. By the time I realize it, it was too late. The place was closed. Could this be the end of a hat that I created? It used to be a such a dark shade of black. Now it's sweat and sun stained to the point of no return. I worked on that hat for years. I needed that special hat for special things. I thought it could be gone for good. Forever. My hat with a special purpose, lost in the blink of an eye because I let it loose in an unfamiliar gym. What was I thinking? I don't want to start over creating another one. Years of work went into that hat. Years! But I got lucky. My hat was in the lost and found, waiting for me. It almost got thrown out too but the owner decided to keep it since it was a recent addition. He knew which one it was too. My hat was safe along with my mental health.


And that is the story of how I almost lost the world's grossest hat.

Moment Pie

Moment pie is an idea I've been kicking around my head the last year or so. Everyone wants a part of a special moment. People like being apart of unique and novel moments which they can talk about with others for years to come. To share and be a apart of something. To be apart of the story. Everyone wants a slice of that sweet moment pie. I see it all the time. Maybe someone just announced they got pregnant and everyone in ear shot immediately floods that person. Now they too can reminisce about "the day it all began" many years from now with that person. Did you get engaged? How many people tried to figuratively crawl up your butt and wear you as a suit to be as close to the news as possible? Probably a few. Did some tragic news befall you in public? Which people tried to shoehorn their way into your shit during that time?

Moment pie. That sweet moment pie. Everyone wants a slice. Everyone wants to be apart of that moment. We humans are social creatures for the most part. Perhaps we have evolved to crave that moment pie to help us build community and camaraderie. To ensure teamwork and ultimately our survival.


Well stop it.


Get your own slice of moment pie you mooching bastards. I'll share it with who I choose or keep it all for myself.

Another Hipster Philosophy I Hate

I can't definitively confirm hipsters are responsible for a vast majority of bad quotes that float around the interwebs. But I can say that I'm 97% sure they are actually responsible for these terrorist attacks on the English language. I don't appreciate quotes that are meant to sound deep but lack in realistic grounding. And the deeper they sound, the bigger the name people try to attach to them. Ghandi and Lincoln are the most popular choices of the Internet to attach lame quotes to. It's all utter nonsense. No one attaches their own name to these bad attempts at deep-sounding rhetoric. Many fear sounding like pretentious douchebags. Others fear that no one would give them real credit because they are nobody. They are right on both accounts. 

But I digress. I'm getting way too far away from the subject I wanted to really write about. Yesterday I saw this quote and simultaneously shit my pants and threw up in my mouth a little. It's so fucking stupid that it literally assaults my eyeballs every time I begrudgingly read it. 

"What others think of you is none of your business."

Shut.

The. 

Fuck.

Up.

This advice is well-meaning in a way. It wants to tell you to not care so much all the time about what others think about you. Which is fine. But just say that. Not this sentence that sounds like it's commanding you to not make it your business. 

So I feel like I'm talking in a circle. But that's ok because I'm about to drop some truth bombs all over your shit. My biggest problem with this quote is that it's not realistic. As a human being that lives on planet Earth, it is necessary to care about what others think about you at least a little bit. You have to care a little about what others think about you. For instance, you have to care about what your boss thinks if you want to remain gainfully employed. If your boss thinks you're a lazy piece of shit with a 5th grade education. Wider than that, you probably care a little about what your coworkers think about you. If your coworkers label you as "the crazy one" or "the lazy one" you're screwed. Get ready for a career full of burnout and drinking rubbing alcohol in an abandoned swimming pool. The people you work with have a big potential to make your life hell. If you've ever had a shitty job because your coworkers sucked, you know what I'm talking about. What about your friends? Of course you care about what your friends think. You want to keep them as friends, right? If they think you're a monumental bitch whose company does not enhance the quality of their lives, you don't get to have friends anymore. Even wider than that, you have to care a little about what strangers think. Not to a huge degree because that's just silly. But you don't want to trip in a huge restaurant and look clumsy or yell at your spouse at the grocery store. You don't want to read porn magazines on a bus, or smell like tuna in a crowded mall. You have to care a little because that's how other humans get along with each other. It's how our race has evolved. We have to care a little and cooperate to survive/cope with our crazy world. If that means caring a little what strangers think, fine. I'll take that. 

Of course this quote is designed for our anxiety, over-analytical friends who care what everyone thinks and tries to please everyone in a 10 mile radius. You don't have to care deeply what people think. Just enough to not be the most hated douchebag on the planet.