I was driving home the other day and the radio got flipped to an AM Talk Radio station in my button mashing. They were talking about something scandalous. I listened to 5 minutes of their talking and then went back to mashing buttons until the book I’m listening to started playing out of the car stereo.
A month ago, I would’ve known many, many details about the story they were talking about. I took 10 minutes when I got home to read up on it.
Do you know what I was missing? Not much. It was easy to quickly get the basic facts of the story and understand what the controversies were.
Ultimately, it has no bearing on my life. I wasted 10 minutes. Back before I #QuitTheNews, it could’ve been anywhere from 25 minutes to 3 hours. It still would’ve had no bearing on my life. But I would’ve given my time to it anyway, because there are hundreds of articles, angles, and opinions.
So, all that to say, I think this is going pretty well.
a little more serious
Busy, so busy…
Sometimes I sing the Thomas the Tank Engine song to myself:
We’re busy so busy,
So many things to do,
Huffing and puffing,
It’s work the whole day through,
Pick up workmen from the Docks,
‘Where’s that toolkit?’
‘Where’s that box?’
Just keep working round the clock,
We’re busy, busy, busy.
And then I realize, it’s my choice to be busy. I need to make different choices. Where’s that toolkit? Where’s that box?
To My Wife, on Our Eighth Non-iversary
Vacuuming for the Creation Mandate
I vacuum every day.
Maybe not quite every day, but nearly every day. It’s part of my job, you see. I manage a high-traffic office; we have people in and out all day long. And their feet bring in dirt and stones and leaves and all kinds of stuff.
As the new year kicked off, I tried, as so many do, to do some heavy duty processing about who I am and what my purpose is. That kind of thinking can at times be detrimental to one’s mental health, but I’ll tell you, this go-round, I’ve really enjoyed the process.
Because I’m learning to appreciate the small things. Like vacuuming. God’s initial mandate for man was that he be fruitful, multiply, and subdue the earth. Believe it or not, vacuuming is one of the ways I accomplish that mandate. Every day, the earth tries to win the battle by dumping more of itself all over my carpets. And every day, I beat it back with a whirring hoover.
It’s good work. It restores order from chaos. It makes presentable what was a mess. So, I vacuum every day, but I’m learning to appreciate it.
Good Socks
I was putting away laundry today and thinking mundane thoughts. Among the mundane thoughts, “These socks are the best socks the world has ever seen.”
Now, give me a second to explain:
These are not just any socks. These are the socks I bought before Christmas when Sears told me that if I spent $11.49 more, I could have free shipping (I know, I know, I probably ended up spending an extra $4.00, but it got me $5.99 worth of free socks). I was buying my wife a Christmas present. And I needed comfortable socks.
And now, when I wear those socks, I’m comfortable. They are great. They look like socks, but they feel like a cushion of air. I’m mostly joking, but I have many socks, and none of them compare to these socks. These socks make me genuinely a little bit brighter in the morning.
And the point, dear reader, is that if something so minute as socks can make me a little brighter, then human beings are certainly silly.