A very cursed pencil sharpener I saw this last week.

May it be a light to you in dark places...

Adminisk8or

01/02/2024

Sometimes the season hits you fast. And this year was no exception... and neither were the seasonal blues, as well.

I am normally all about being an open book and sharing some of my deepest hopes and fears... but as I've said before, moderation in all things is important to keep a balanced life- and that philosophy needs to be heavily applied to my thoughts from this last week. Let's just say the 27th and the 28th were not great emotionally... and I would go so far as to say perhaps one of the biggest emotional lows I've ever felt in my life... and perhaps the same was true for my wife. In any case, we made it through. I say that, but even now, I still feel those voices of sorrow and evil creeping in the back of my mind- and for those who understand, they can really be hard to ignore.

It's kind of interesting, actually, because up until this year, whether it was coincidence or not, I felt like I noticed a pattern in my life, where every other Christmas switched things up- one year things would be good, the next they'd be horrible- rotate and repeat. But as I looked back in my entries from last year, while it wasn't outright bad, we were experiencing some depression. In my opinion, I think this year wins in terms of depression, but it did throw me off to see that, after like ten years of observing this, it was changed up.

But you know what, on second thought, now that I'm looking at it again, I do have to step out of my own present-self shoes for a moment and see that a lot of it comes down to perspective. Looking back, I remember my Christmas of 2014 fondly, while I was off in the Philippines with strangers who quickly became some of my closest friends at the time. But if I really think about how I felt during that time, and if I go back to my old journal entries at the time, I would find that, while nothing was perhaps altogether terrible and bad, there were a number of small things that were working down on me. The days were hot, our goals seemed impossible to meet, and even my closest friends sometimes seemed to turn away from me.

Like I said, in spite of the circumstances at the time, I found joy through it all. Despite my memories of sitting alone on a dark, rebar-protruding cement roof with a plastic lawn chair and a small wood desk, with a little candle in a half-cut Gatorade bottle, writing down in my journal reflective thoughts about the good and the bad I was going through at the time, I see that time I was there, and I know, in spite of the somber and even sorrowing moments, I was happy. It takes time to look back and see more clearly that the dark moments, however deep and profound, were not the defining ones.

I'm sure it's because we just did a Lord of The Rings extended edition marathon yesterday, but even if we hadn't, I would hardly be able to resist including what might be my absolute favorite quote of all time, and definitely my favorite quote in that story, which comes from none other than our very good friend and hero, Samwise the Brave:

“It's like in the great stories . . . The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think . . . I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going, because they were holding on to something. That there is some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for.” And there's nothing more I can say that could top that. I hope for any out there who have had a rough season of it so far, especially emotionally, that it only goes uphill from here- and if it doesn't, I hope you find your Light of Elendil, and even in the darkest of places, you can hold onto what little good there is. And I hope you know you have made and will yet make a difference in people's lives for the better. I know I find that hard to believe, myself, sometimes- but if I can believe it of whoever you are, stranger or friend, then surely it must also be true of myself to some degree.

The new year is now dawning, and new adventures and strange new things await us, both good and bad. May we each bravely venture forth and win, one day at a time. Until next time, see ya!