Here's to a Happy New Year!

I got hung up for about two weeks, completely avoiding my laptop. I felt so much weight from not writing. It was Christmas, so excuses came easy, but I felt it starting to pile up.

Thankfully, I was able to be present to enjoy the presents on Christmas morning.

Truthfully, the run-up to the big day was a major heartbreak. Due to problems with the kilns at the studio, none of my Christmas gifts were ready in time for Christmas. I cried kind of a lot about it.

My emotions are riding shotgun these days. I cry at any story that can complete an arc. Songs, commercials, or a lazy money grab like A Christmas Story Christmas—if it wraps up well, I will well up and cry. If it’s a solid piece of storytelling, I will sob uncontrollably.

I attended a funeral last week for an old cowboy who trained with Uzor for 30+ years. His son put on a clinic for how to honor your parent’s passing through storytelling. I laughed, cried, wished I knew him better and felt inspired to be the type of guy Pete Lewis was.

It was an honor to behold and a wakeup call that I’m preparing emotionally for the most important show of my life. I’m getting out gallons of tears ahead of time so I can guarantee you we’re going to laugh at Mom’s funeral. I’m going to kill.

I heard a Hidden Brain episode (Emotions 2.0: What's Better Than Being Happy?) about the benefits of regularly experiencing the broad range of emotions at our disposal.

Thanks to this nudge, I made it a point to be playful and happy at family hang-times this holiday season. I didn’t take up crying because of the podcast but it is nice to have a reason for feeling superior because I cry a couple times a day.

We unwrapped my creations this afternoon on Mom’s front porch. She is doing great and getting around like your average able-bodied 68-year-old lady.

She’s halfway through her radiation treatment, and we’re seeing the results we were hoping for. The pain that was making it hard for her to get around is gone.

She’s nine days out from her last chemo infusion and still feeling fatigued. The further away we get from that, the better she will feel.

It was really gratifying to sit with Mom as she unwrapped each piece and raved about how much people would pay for them. It was a solid thirty minutes of Mom blowing sunshine at me.

When I was younger, it drove me crazy. In her opinion, everything I’ve ever done has been the best thing anyone has ever done in the history of people doing things.

My friends would be like, “Dude, your mom is great. What’s your problem?” My problem was intelligence. I knew everything I did growing up was a solid C with an occasional B-.

I was a squirrely, smart, weird kid. I had ADHD. I was dyslexic. I was hyper-allergic. I was constantly in trouble for “making mistakes” that seemed perfectly sensible to me.

It’s honestly the same model I’ve been running on my whole life. At nearly 45, I feel like I’ve finally made enough mistakes to lay a solid foundation of self-security.

When I was younger, I wanted her to give me honest feedback. Today, I was happy to sit and just soak it all up. I even started to indulge her fantasy of selling them.

Then her next-door neighbor walked over for a quick “Have you heard my cancer story?” and she starts showing and selling him on how great my pottery is. I was mortified. It was hilarious!

Before moving on to his cancer miracle, he agreed that my pottery was very good and should surely fetch a pretty penny at the right arts and crafts bazaar.

While on our way to radiation this past week, Mom asked me to help her start painting. She explained that, thanks to Auntie Jen, she had all the supplies she needed but was still too intimidated to start.

I was so happy she asked me to help her get started by joining her on the journey. I had no idea she wanted to paint. I have always been too intimidated by actually trying painting.

I love ceramics because the finished product is out of your control. You build it, slather glaze all over it, and send it off to go through hell. Then you get to see what something you made looks like after it’s gone through hell.

Of course it sucks, it’s been through hell!

Our painting journey starts this week as we head into the new year. I love that about the new year—it’s that little bump you need to finally start doing that thing you’ve been thinking about all year long.

I’ve at least got a good idea for my first series of paintings. Have you seen The Birds? The horror movie by Alfred Hitchcock where the bad guy is birds? If you haven’t seen it, I’d highly recommend you catch it before it leaves Netflix on 12/31 because it is hilarious.

Let me repeat: HILARIOUS! If you haven’t seen it, imagine fail videos of kids at the beach getting smacked by birds cut together with spooky music to make a scary movie. HILARIOUS!

But it isn’t just fodder for MST3K. It’s really satisfying to look at because so many shots are meticulous. Any one scene from that movie would make a good painting. That’s the plan. Instead of starting with that “abstract” spiral in a few colors, I’ll start by ripping off a master in another medium.

Stealing from the past is an easy way to appear better than you are at anything. Crossing media enables you to appear original while exploiting the derivative vacuum created by every masterwork.

My baby Z turns 15 tomorrow. I’m so glad she made it. For a long time, her favorite story to tell was about how, when she was a baby, I liked to drop her. We said she should stop telling the story because it makes people feel sad. And Z said, “I know, that’s why it’s my favorite story to tell.” So funny.

She makes me so proud, and she takes really good care of me. One of the things I did right when she was growing up was spending special time with her in the mornings before she went to kindergarten.

It turns out toddlers’ memories reset around four years old. So all those epic bedtimes and hours watching Ratatouille again add up to a big zero in future “remember whens.”

Parenting hack: if you want kid credit for being a good dad during your daughter’s childhood, you really don’t need to engage until kindergarten.

Instead of dropping her off at before-school care, I took her to the park for an hour. We made friends, we’d pet the dogs, feed the ducks, or play hide and seek. Thank God I always found her.

I wonder if Aimee would have been proud of her little girl, had I come home to tell her, “Guess what happened this morning? Z won at hide and seek.”

Now I will regularly reminisce about all the great days we had together just to make sure she remembers all that fun when I ask her to help me unload my car.

Earlier today, I spotted a potentially cool piece of furniture on the street in downtown Chandler. It had a “Free” sign on it. I tried to get it myself, but it was too heavy. I flagged down a guy walking in the neighborhood, and he put it in my car. It was great!

I also figured out how to get people to steal stuff for me. I just need to keep that “Free” sign in my car. I can stick it on stuff I want, then go find some nice person to steal it for me.

It’s the perfect con. They will be committing a crime, but they are going to feel great about helping the handicapped. If you don’t consider the couple who are out the patio fire pit, it’s a win-win really.

I think Z is going to love flipping this POS piece of antique WTF furniture into something fun and funky.

Or, she’s going to think it’s dumb, in which case she’ll happily help me unload the junk in the back of my car.