Murtaugh

          Remember in Lethal Weapon the iconic catch phrase of Danny Glover’s character Roger Murtaugh? “I’m getting too old for this shit.” Yeah, me too.

          Yesterday I got home from work around 4 and Stacey told me that her mom had offered to keep the boys so we could go eat. In addition, she also said she could watch them all night because she didn’t keep them Monday. My eyes lit up: freedom! We haven’t had that kind of stretch of off time since we went to Kansas City for a weekend in July.

          On the way home from eating and then walking it off at the mall, we decided to stop by the liquor store; I wanted to try the new Sam Adams Winter Lager and she wanted some champagne. So we picked these up and then came home to our quite, empty house and then proceeded to watch tv and drink.

          I can hear Murtaugh now.

          In our desperate attempt to embrace every second of our freedom, we probably imbibed a tiny bit too much and today we are both paying for it. We’re not catastrophically hung over, but just enough so that we know we were drinking last night. It’s been more than four years since I have been drunk, and I don’t really miss it. It’s not terrible, but feeling like this sucks. Interestingly enough, when I would get hung over in my younger years, it was never that bad, but now that I’m older and haven’t done it so long it’s taking its toll.

          I guess it’s just nature telling me, like Murtaugh, that I’m getting too old for this...

The Meaning of Life

I heard something today that’s had my brain working overtime, which sometimes is a relatively easy feat. What I heard was a quote by an author, and now I can’t find his name to attribute it to him, but I guess it doesn’t really matter because whether I have his name or not, you should realize by now that I’m just going to enlighten you on my feelings towards the subject.

“The meaning of life is education and entertainment.”

Learn and have fun. Sounds pretty good to me. You? I really like this statement a lot because it really boils down what we as humans are all about. We are constantly learning and constantly teaching and more often than not, our motivations in life are driven by the next fun thing we get to do. Pretty cool. I think this oversimplifies things a bit, but it’s still a rock solid outlook as far as I am concerned.

The one glaring omission I see is that it leaves out love. Everyone loves someone. Their family, their friends, or some even love themselves. I think love is a universal motivator and it’s the true meaning of life. It’s not about the boat ride, it’s about how much stuff gets moved by your wake. (I just made that up. I may start working on some greeting card pitches.) I think that’s true though. Good or bad, the wake you have created in your life has affected others in numerous ways and, from the way I see it now, it’s all about trying to make it a fun boogie-boarding wake and not an “oh my god he’s drowning” wake.

I’ve said it before on here and I’ll say it again today: I’ve put a lot of negative ‘wake’ into this world. Most likely more than my fair share, but I’ve learned and I’m trying to do better. I understand my mistakes and my outright screw-ups now and I have taken great pains to not follow in those same steps again. Sure, sometimes I open my mouth and say whatever’s on the tip of my tongue and that rubs certain people the wrong way, but at least now I know what I’m doing. There’s the education.

Don’t listen to me (unless you want to use my boat analogy, in which case listen to me and make sure I’m credited appropriately.) or some author telling you what the meaning of your life is. Live for you and the things that drive you. Be a better person tomorrow than you were today and I think you’ll have a pretty good handle on it.

True Creationism

It’s a hair after midnight, so technically it’s Monday. This is the 50^th blog entry I’ve made here at The Madness Spiral. I’ll consider 1-50 Volume 1. I’m just starting to get my feet wet and find my voice. It’s been very difficult at times to find topics that I feel the need to talk about and, even more often, difficult to find the time to blog. I never thought that on October 10^th that I would still be doing this almost daily and that there would be a handful of people who still kept up two months later. It’s very important to me and very encouraging to know that there are other living, breathing people out there who are at least a trifle bit entertained by my ramblings. I appreciate every one of you for reading.

Sunday was great. Stacey and I woke up and actually got to spend some time together and with the boys today. Then, this evening we ended up at Patti’s with my parents, my brother, and my sister, her husband and their two boys. It was a good time. It was entirely too cold to be out and about, but it was good to have all of us together and out of the house. One of my favorite things is listening to the constant commotion of my two boys and my sister’s two as they interact. It’s fun to say the least. Then Matthew came over and he and Stacey and I played some DnD until around eleven, then Matt and I watched the season finale of The Walking Dead. Fan. Tas. Tic.

It was a great day untarnished by the soul sucking retail industry. It was a day like I could have way more often if I was sitting behind a keyboard for a paycheck, creating something instead of shilling something that small Asian children spent hours on assembling. I’ve got the voices of gods flowing from my fingertips and the design of worlds in my brain. I have a desperate desire to create lately and if I’m not doing it, I feel off. Next to the sounds of my boys’ and my nephews’ laughter, feeling off because I’m not striving to create is about the best feeling in the world.