A Life of Adventure: We don't have a chimney...

The holidays have arrived once again. This time of year conjures up images of family by the fire, snowy days, good will, reflection on the year past, and recuperation. However for a vast majority of us, this time of year brings with it busy schedules, chaos, and stress.

Retail stores are consumed by shoppers. Employees are pushed to the edge of sanity by their managers and customers who have already lost theirs. Teachers and faculty are pushed to score tests, deliver grades, and wrap up the semester. Students are worried about passing exams and finding the dollars and transportation to make it home. The airlines, trains, hotels, and rental car agencies are beset by travelers desperate to make it home. Service businesses gear up for that last push before the official end of the fiscal year. CPA firms are drowned in a sea of tax projection paperwork. Food banks are stressed and searching for food. The homeless are trying to plan for the coming dark cold days of winter. Therapists are getting more calls from stressed out lonely people, and somewhere there is like 2000 elves that are 1.2 million toys behind in production with less than three weeks to go until the fat man flies.

People are cleaning, prepping, planning, cooking, coming, going, shopping, wrapping, writing cards, reading cards, trimming trees, hanging wreaths, and trying to find the time to keep the magic going for their kid who is just old enough to wonder how a reindeer could possibly be aerodynamic.

I am here to tell you that none of that means anything. The holidays are a celebration of all that has passed in the year before, and if that year wasn't so hot... it is a celebration of the fresh start that is just around the corner.

In the end, there are those that will feel the season and those that won't. You have to decide which one you want to be.

This is a birdo that we bought this season for our tree. I put him up top where he belongs.

Dangly legs look funny when our dogs tug at the lower branches of our tree.

Too many cookies!

My wifey got me this ship in an ornament for my birthday one year.

A Christmas penguin flotilla.

This was the first ornament that Beej and I got when we bought our first house!

This was the very first ornament we ever bought together.

Ya' gotta plan the route.

To feel the holiday you have to be a snowflake. You must be simple, unique, and you can't care about where you land (whether that is your living room or an office). Take the time to be silly. Trim a tree, sing the songs, make a snow angel, string some popcorn. If you can't leave your office... then turn the radio on and do a Christmas dance in your chair to the first holiday song you hear. Put lights around your cubicle and put tinsel in your briefcase.

I promise you, you will not regret it.