FTT Off-Topic: Run, Think, and Question

Why The Irish Drink

Not really sports, not settled, not ending. You know how it goes by now.

As I was running my miles tonight, I passed by the ever-growing number of houses with seasonal lights, and thought about my place in the spectrum of things, because, well, that's always better than thinking about how much better it would feel if I stopped running.

How I spend my life and talents helping companies encourage consumers to spend money, while I hold fast to my family to save and scrimp.

That I want, more than is in any way healthy, for my Eagles to win the Super Bowl, while in no way feeling like they have any kind of shot, and trying, and failing, to be happy just with a watchable and intriguing team that seems to be on the rise. Or for my Sixers to win games and still win the lottery for Andrew Wiggins, and my A's to stay put in the Oakland Coliseum and win the World Series. All of which is, of course, entirely impossible.

How I try to live an upstanding and moral life as a father, while spending far too many hours on poker and fantasy sports and blogging and other things that, well, have nothing to do with being a parent.

That I censor my language in front of my kids and in this blog, but that nearly all of my favorite comedians work deep blue, and if I ever got my courage and time in line, I'd probably do the same on stage. Since, well, my inner monologue is frequently and strongly profane.

How I struggle with anger while constantly using it, because there is no better way to get through a workout, and to a lesser extent, household chores or other tasks that just need to be cleared than to hate them, and destroy them with the cold fire of This Ends Now.

That I work best without distraction, but if I don't have something going on in the background -- music, comedy or a quick parsing of content sites -- nothing gets done, because the focus is too intense, and, well, distracting.

How I favor the passing of many laws -- marijuana legalization and taxation, licensed prostitution, an inflation-indexed minimum wage, a rollback to past income tax levels on the wealthy, job programs focused around infrastructure and true energy independence from fossil fuels, licensed gambling and taking profit out of select industries like education, journalism, prison services and medicine that are, in my opinion, too important to the long-term stability of the country to be left to the eventual end of competition that pure capitalism produces, since pure capitalism becomes monopolistic and corrupt without outside oversight and the periodic reboot -- that do not directly help me, might even cost me money, and are likely to make my job as a parent much more difficult, at least in the short run.

And that I'm relentlessly green in my choices, but as I pass light display after light display... I'm kind of ashamed to not have one up in my own home.

Or that, if I simply had made better fiscal choices previously, I would have these things, and a second or third car for my own personal amusement, and a clothes dryer, and more square footage than any family of four should ever want or need, and so on, and so on.

That I want to be charitable, and positive, and optimistic and open, but usually am not.

These are splits that many of us live with without even thinking about, and I'll go back to not thinking about these things as soon as the next task comes into focus... but the thing about cultural dissonances is that they do tend to get resolved, eventually. What bothers me now, and what I recognize as my 40 problems -- in that everyone alive has 40 problems, and the trick of a good life is to just make sure they change -- will not hold.

And, finally, that I pride myself on trying to remain open to new options and ways of doing things... but that I'm doing many of the same things that I've been doing for years and years, and, well, January is coming.

When I run now, it's usually without headphones. Better for thinking.