Brave New...Whatever

Thanksgiving pic. Aren't we cute?

Belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, everybody!  Yes, I know it's been ages since I blogged.  You should see my Christmas letter--oh wait, you can't because it's not done. Well, it's almost done.  Well, I think I'll get it mailed this week. Maybe. Possibly.  It's been that kind of holiday season.

I don't make New Year resolutions because I've discovered that they're basically a setup, but if I did, I'd be promising to blog more.  The original idea was every Thursday morning.  That worked pretty well for a long time, particularly when I was participating in the Talk Thursday discussion tree, but it sort of fell out of favor in the last year or so.  Probably just the incursions of Life, with its sub-incursions of Work, Household Stuff and of course Sleep.  Honestly, though, I will try to blog more, and since Thursdays worked pretty well for a long time, I'll see you again in two days.

Wait, hold on a second.  I should at least tell you what's going on.  The odd answer, though, is not very much.  I'm driving a lot because Joan can't drive because she can't see, but other than that it's just swimming, work, home, household chores, writing a little, meditation and other Buddhist-y things. I mean, there are crises every now and again--we have a sick cat, for example; three times to the vet in the last three weeks--and big major household repairs that need to be done for which I have no clue where the money will come from.  But other than that, just the stuff that is.

I think what may be going on here is that I've hit middle age like it's a giant pillow.  Or maybe an air bag.  I haven't felt like going out to bars, picking up 18-year-old ingenues and driving drunk like a character in a bad Hemingway novel, but I am about to turn 48 here, and I do think I'm having my version of a midlife crisis.  It's maybe time to admit that certain things are simply Never Going To Happen.  I'll probably never play backup keyboards for Herbie Hancock, for example, both because I don't play keyboards and because Herbie Hancock doesn't need any help.  I'll probably never be first bassoon for the Philadelphia Orchestra, either, unless someone dies and makes me God, and my odds of ever climbing to Everest Base Camp to check out the mountaineering scene are shrinking exponentially by the day.  Something about high-altitude cerebral edema and being out of the reach of Western medicine.

Or, as Annie Lennox put it, "This is the book I never read/ These are the words I never said/ This is the path I'll never tread/ These are the dreams I'll dream instead."

Which is another way of saying, "Let's just wing it and see what happens."