Photobomb: Christmas 2021 (and a New Year’s Resolution)

“What the hell is an Auld Lang Syne anyway?”

I’m back from my extended vacation to see family and friends for the holiday season! Am I feeling rejuvenated and refreshed? Am I feeling relaxed and rested? Am I feeling some other R-based synonym regarding my mental state? No! I am feeling none of those things! I feel stressed!

That’s not to say I didn’t have a great time seeing friends and family over break, though! I don’t want anyone getting the wrong idea; I had a great time celebrating Christmas in Chicago. Because that’s what I did; I left Minneapolis and went to Chicago for like ten days so I could do Christmas-y things with my parents, grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, high school friends, in-laws, pets-in-law, various assorted trees, a handful of fish, and so on and so forth and what have you. It’s funny that I still think of it as a “school break,” because I’m no longer in school. Now it’s just a “work break,” and not like an officially sanctioned one or anything. I just asked my boss to not schedule me for a week-and-a-half and he was like “yeah, sure, we’ll accommodate you.” It wasn’t paid or anything, but hey, time off without getting fired is time off without getting fired, if you catch my drift. Just goes to show another reason why I really do love my job; you don’t see those kind of benefits anywhere else in this dog-forsaken country. Forget paid family leave; you want holiday leave? Fuck you, get back to work.

Then why the hell am I still stressed? Two reasons: One, I have an unsustainable set of mental expectations regarding what I can accomplish and when, and if I fail to meet those expectations (which I consistently do), I beat myself up for it and feel bad. Two, I did a lot over break. There was a lot of catching up to do, and I didn’t even get to all of it. I did not rest on vacation. As my mother would say, I sucked the marrow from the bones of life. It was very much a marrow-sucking vacation.

Like I said, I did a lot. Like, a lot a lot. Something every day for pretty much ten days straight. With no real breaks or anything. And that’s find, that’s completely manageable and that’s what allowed me to see as many people I love as I did, but it’s also kind of exhausting even to talk about it. Especially when I keep that dumb fucking daily journal that I have. For context, if you haven’t read every post I’ve ever made like the NSA goons hanging around behind my desktop, here’s the deal; I keep an OCD-induced personal shitlist of everything that happens to me in a day. I don’t like keeping it. In fact, I loathe it and regularly wish that I didn’t feel like I had to do it. Pretty much every intense emotional feeling or event over the last seven-ish years, plus anything else even remotely of note, is there. No one reads it but me, and even I don’t read it. It’s the same kind of self-indulgence that is Mark Twain’s three-part, 2400-page monologue of an autobiography, but even more unseemly and self-destructive. Because this is a mental illness symptom I have yet to be able to treat in the seven or so years of treatment I’ve had, plus the fact that I am (possibly due to the OCD) scared to stop now means that I will be, for the foreseeable future, be documenting everything that happens to me. It sucks. But in addition to being the chains I forge in life, it does make finding information about vacations very easy if I ever want to write about them, so today at least it’s serving a purpose!

I don’t really expect you all to read this, but here is my own synopsis of my winter break, with the selected highlights in an only-slightly modified and mostly-correct order, as I wrote it in my journal the other day: “Before break I worked on the climate book, and had staff training for winter at Baker, and then I drove to Lisle, had a panic attack about climate change, spent time with Mom and Dad and Nick, went to the aquarium, hung out with Annamae, hung out with Melanie and Kyle and Olivia and Elise, gave gifts to people, fed Penny the cat, went downtown for Nick’s birthday and to the modern art museum, went to Decatur and picked up Cheyenne from the airport, helped her dad plant some trees, opened gifts and took pictures with her family, saw Kenny for lunch, had lunch with Grannie Annie, Rob, and Isabelle, celebrated Christmas with mom and made Christmas cookies, went to Grandpa and Jane’s for Wurster Christmas, celebrated Christmas with Dad, went to Sima Christmas at the Plainfield Sima’s, had Cheyenne come to visit in Chicago, had a painting party and cleaned my room a bit, and saw Heather and the Nitzkis a few times, ran some errands and got snowed in, eventually drove back to Minneapolis, did an overnight at Baker after driving six hours, got a bunch of Steam games, saw the new spiderman movie, got groceries with Cheyenne, and stuff.”

I have left out a thing or two intentionally, so as not to air all my dirty laundry or anyone else’s, and I apologize if something that I did with you over the break got skipped in this synopsis. But it is in there, trust me. Everything is in there. And no, no one will ever read it again. Oops. You are still important to me, I promise.

But this is just the easy way of me saying what I did over break without actually telling you the whole story of what I did over break because that would be a) kind of boring and b) a lot of time, and as I’m writing this it’s Monday night and I want to sleep, so I’m all for easy right about now. But there is a far more interesting way to tell you about my break; I can just show you! This is a Photobomb post, after all, so I’m gonna throw a bunch of photos at you, dear reader. Except these aren’t old photos, no, these are photos from this year, this month, this December of 2021 that just ended. And yes, they are mostly the same as my Instagram post from, like, yesterday.

At some point, I realized that this whole Photobomb thing is basically just “Instagram but with context,” which maybe makes it even more self-centered? I’m not sure. Normally I don’t like social media. I make strong efforts to purposely avoid interacting with it. It makes me feel terrible and generally lowers my feelings of self-worth. But I figured for today, hey, might as well lean into it. I’ve already got the pictures, I could just double my SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and MARKETABILITY by selling my memories online in two separate places. But I also kind of like talking about myself, because who doesn’t, so whatever. And this is ever so slightly closer to genuine human connection than actual social media, so that’s a plus. Another plus, it’s kind of fun. And kind of easy. Let’s stop analyzing and just roll with it, this is the world we live in anyway. When in the Meta, do as Zuckerberg does.

Before I get to the photos and lose everyone completely, I do have one last thing to say. This isn’t just the ending of a year, it’s also the beginning of one. And is tradition, I feel it’s fitting that I have a new year’s resolution. And further keeping with the theme of mental instability and stress, my new years resolution is two-fold; practice self-control and not be so damn hard on myself.

These points are kind of antithetical, really, but I figure maybe they’ll help balance me out. But also I only just added the second part right now, so we’ll see if it sticks. The first part, the self-control part, speaks to the fact that since the pandemic started, my self-control has been shit. This was recently coupled with a post-graduation malaise that I’ve previously discussed, and it’s led to me being in a not-fantastic shape, mentally and physically. I thought graduated life would be easier, but no. Now I make my own decisions and I’ve realized that, huh, there’s a lot of unexpected pressure now that my life is really, truly my own. A very different kind of pressure. But between the pandemic and this new, weird pressure, I haven’t been keeping up with my workouts, I haven’t been keeping up with healthy eating, I haven’t been keeping up with my personal projects, and I definitely haven’t been keeping up with the Joneses. Just about the only thing I keep up with is Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the latest news on Elden Ring.

I just feel very out of step with a real schedule, and I think scheduling helps me feel at ease, ironically enough. So I want to really start knuckling down, with the working out regularly and getting up early and going to bed at reasonable times and all that good shit. No clue if it’ll work. But the key to new year’s resolutions, or any life change (and I think this is some real good advice here, so listen up) is this; small steps, and don’t give up when you fail. Because you will fail. Unless you have a resolve of steel, if you’re starting a new year’s resolution like “read every day,” or “work out every day,” you’ll probably screw up and miss days here or there. The knee-jerk reaction to that is to say “welp, I failed, the rest of the year is ruined, might as well quit now and not disappoint anyone else.” I know I’ve done exactly that before. But these things take time, and making mistakes is ok. You’ve just got to get back on the horse. And even if it takes longer than you thought, eventually, you’ll get there. And start with progress that’s manageable, too. Working out twice a week isn’t as great as working out five times a week right from the get-go, but it’s better than nothing! Savor that better than nothing.

Which is always easier said than done. And as someone who is famously hard on themselves, I am probably not the person to be taking this advice from. Which is why the second half of my new year’s resolution dovetails nicely with that conveniently-placed adage; I want to be less hard on myself. This one should be easy, right? I just got to cut myself some slack. If I screw up while trying to better myself, that’s ok, right? Wrong. I’ll hate myself for it, even if I do let myself take a break or some shit. That’s the hard part, the whole mental change thing. But baby steps and all that. It’s all a part of the process.

But with that, then, Happy New Year! I’m done talking about this shit for now. Hopefully, I’ll be better regimented in a few months, and not so loose and lackadaisical with the work that I really want to be doing. We’ll see how it goes.

Anyway, enough about me, here’s me. In picture format.

These two technically came from before break, when Cheyenne, Nick, and I met up with some of our friends in Minneapolis to visit the Holiday Glow Lights at the State Fairgrounds or whatever it was called. Yes, we have friends in Minnesota! And they’re fun to hang out with! Can you believe it? I can’t!

On a related note, just before break I also went to the St. Paul European Christmas Market with Cheyenne, where we got spiced wine and avoided a man in a Krampus costume. Several men, actually. I don’t know if they were together. But the Christmas Market is like a beta-cuck version of Chicago’s Christkindlmarkt, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Maybe that’s just my Chicagoan talking. Still a good time though!

In honor of Nick’s 21st year of birth, we went to downtown Chicago and got breakfast cocktails and drank with Nick for the first (legal) time. We also went to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, which was as intriguing as it is bewildering. Then he had a party and a bunch of his friends were there and sang karaoke! And someone puked on the rug. Looking at you, cat.

This cat in particular. Sorry you had to be affronted in this way. There is no context here that would make this photo easier to stomach. Moving on.

Are you really in the Christmas spirit if the penguins don’t have their stockings yet? We went to the aquarium at the beginning of break, and saw a bunch of neat fish, but the highlight was probably watching two humans struggle to hang Christmas stockings on steel wire six feet above a bunch of flightless birds. And then watch said birds fight over who got the most fish. And shit on the keepers. Wonderful fun all around.

This post is all out of order already, but chronologically and canonically, Christmas with Cheyenne’s family came first this year. I went down to Decatur and spent time with them before driving back to Chicago, but I got to exchange gifts and take Christmas photos with her family, and learn all about something related to a pirate call. Pirates don’t just say “Yar” or “Arrr,” apparently. It’s now more of a guttural, throaty “ORRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHH” that I imagine is more suited to dwarves than pirates. But you learn something new every day.

After that was Wurster (my mom’s side) family Christmas, which, funnily enough, was possibly the first-ever-in-the-history-of-ever sober Wurster Christmas, and as NIck pointed out, it coincided with his 21st birthday. Just his luck, I guess. What a world it is we live in. Out of frame of this photo is also a bird. Just thought I’d add that. Also, this is about half the people from Wurster Thanksgiving, since the other half live in Florida. Ah, well. Take what holidays you can.

Sima family (my dad’s side) Christmas was the last Christmas to be celebrated in this timeline of mine, and we have a new tradition of exchanging secret grab bag gifts every year instead of a ton of gifts. It’s more fun this way, and also a good reason for me not to spend hundreds of dollars on gifts. Barrier for entry to this gift grab-bag is pretty low, but everything has to start with a certain letter. This year it was H. Some people, like my cousin Steph and her wife, went above and beyond. Others did not. Not naming names or anything but someone’s gift may have been uninspired shit I found at Target. At least my uninspired Target rubbish started with H, though, unlike Hollywood Movie Star John Wayne’s Birthplace Collectible Beer Stein. Wait, no, if you put it that way, maybe it does. (I jest, I thought all the gifts were great)

But in terms of surprising levels of effort, at least Chicago’s Union Station does a little bit more than a bucket hat, Noah. (Joking, again, Cheyenne loves the hat)

Found this out in the wilds of Minneapolis, but what a wonderful, wonderful sight this was. I was driving home from the airport after picking up Cheyenne, and she was telling me about her ailing grandfather and I slammed on the brakes and screamed “POOPOO PEEPEE” and threw the car in reverse to get this photo. I hope you like it.

Wow, I can’t believe you made it all the way down here! I barely made it all the way down here myself. I almost quit between penguin shit and Wendell family Christmas. But since you stuck around so long, I want to say thank you. And I genuinely wish you happy holidays and a good new year. If you’re someone that I spent time with over winter break, thank you for spending time with me. I’m glad I got to see you. If you’re someone I didn’t see but had planned to, I am very sorry. Covid is scary. And if you’re neither of those, thanks for being here anyway! Your presence is appreciated, both here and elsewhere. I hope you have a good 2022, too. Happy new year, everyone! Here’s to another year of random blog posts, and hopefully higher global vaccination rates.

In other words, in that first photo, those are two squirrels and a turkey foot, and the bag is full of animal pelts. Saying that out loud makes it sound much worse. But this is just the part of the night where, after I say goodbye, I get to post weird shit from my work. Working with children in nature can be strange, both because the kids say goofy shit and also the job is kind of funky. It’s a special job, though, when finding a half-frozen deer carcass is a genuine benefit. Like, I can’t even tell you how legitimately thrilled I was to find that damn thing. What the fuck is wrong with me.

Either way, that’s the end, and I hope you have a good year, whenever and wherever you are, and thanks for reading! See you next week.