Endings are Beginnings

            It’s interesting that this is the season that’s thought of as marking the end of the year when it’s also marking the beginning of the year as well. Why is it that there’s such a focus on the end of the year, when the beginning of the year happens at – literally – exactly the same time?

            I suppose it’s probably because endings come before beginnings, and what’s right in front of us is easier to see than what’s lurking behind it. It’s all rather arbitrary, anyway, since it’s simply a time someone in the past chose to start counting from, yet we shape our minds around it.

            For example, the end of the year is when it’s important to be with family and to be generous, showing people how much you care. Which is silly, because you should care about people the whole year round, but I feel it also says a lot about humanity as a whole.

“Look! The year is coming to an end, better get together with family before time runs out!” Then the New Year comes and everything becomes about taking strides forward – making this year better than the last. And all the important things, like friends and family, get pushed into the back of the mind until we realize that another year is almost over, so we’d better get together.

            As a species, we love symbols and traditions. Having a checkpoint that we pass every year is a nice way to tell ourselves that we can keep growing and improving, and it gives us a point to use as a starting line. Yet, we’re also supposed to put our best foot forward, so wouldn’t it make more sense to get together with friends and family at the start of the year, rather than procrastinating until the end of the year?

            We could even split the difference. We could shift the New Year to the beginning of winter, rather than the end, and have our traditional get-togethers at both the beginning and end of the year. Or we could move the New Year to the most sensible place to have it start, at the beginning of spring, and we’d get together in the middle of the year.

            Or, of course, we could simply decide that what’s important to us is important for the whole year. Not everything has to have a set time or place. Time is just an imaginary construct we have so we can organize things, anyway. Perhaps we should stop using time as an excuse.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

The Money Cycle

            There’s a very common saying that says, “You need to spend money to make money.” This statement is incredibly true, but the truth runs deeper than most people think. It is generally believed that this is a statement specifically about running a business, but it holds true for far, far more than that.

            For businesses, the saying is true in the largest and most literal sense. In order to have a location to do business, money is needed to pay for it. Before you can sell something (thus, making money), you first need to buy it. Further to that, a business needs to get noticed so people will actually know to come buy from it – so it must spend money on marketing.

            Yet, the average person needs to spend money to make money as well. It isn’t as noticeable because it’s so built in to our awareness that it just comes naturally. The first, and most obvious, is feeding ourselves. If we don’t buy food, we don’t eat and we become inefficient workers, losing our jobs. When seeking a job, we need resumes (money), transportation (money), and, most likely, some technological assistance (money). Then, when we get an interview, we are expected to look our best – which costs money. And if you want a job that requires a higher level of education? You guessed it: money.

            At any walk of life, you need money to make money, and it’s frustrating when people fail to understand that. This week I saw an article about a government refusing to provide homeless shelters because it was ‘enabling’ homeless people and not ‘motivating’ them. So, let’s pretend for a moment that it’s true that homeless people are homeless because they ‘aren’t trying hard enough’. Let’s pretend that there are no mental illnesses, no health problems, and no other factors contributing to homelessness other than how hard they try to get a job.

            So, how is this fictional, perfectly healthy homeless person to get a job? They need you job hunt – which takes money. They need to look presentable – which takes money. They likely need a bank account, which takes money, not to mention an address – which means a home and, once again, money. They may even need an education, a.k.a. money.

            It’s a circular paradox we’ve built into our system. It works only because we are introduced into the cycle – we have other people (usually parents or banks) front the money so we can start making money, and we just continue on from there. But what happens when we fall out of the cycle? What happens when you run out of money and have no way of making more?

            You fall on the ground and get dragged along, barely able to survive until someone generous comes along to pick you up. Someone who can give you enough money that jump-starts you back into the cycle again.

            Rather than standing over a pit someone has fallen into, yelling at them about how useless they are and telling them to climb out on their own, perhaps we should lower a ladder for them. For a government, it’s really as simple as going back to that saying: spend money to make money. If these people are really a ‘drain on the system’, spend more money on them so they can become able to earn their own money. Then you’re not paying for them anymore and they can start paying taxes to you. You spent money to make money, and now they can do it too.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Introvert Surprise Party

            As a reclusive introvert, I’ve never seen the appeal of surprise parties. Colleen, on the other hand, has always wanted one – although, like me, she isn’t really much of a party person. So, I came up with a clever solution. It does require some lucky circumstances for it to play out properly, but here it is: My instructions on how to throw an introverted surprise party.

1.      1. Do not plan a party. Parties are terribly dull things.

2.      2. Wait for the party’s recipient to make social plans with the type of friends they would want invited to a party. It can be just a simple get-together, or perhaps plans for some form of activity (such as playing Dungeons & Dragons).

3.      3. Find a good time, such as the night before the get-together, to sneakily by a cake. Hide it somewhere where it won’t be found before the not-a-party. Leaving it in a car is a good option, if possible – especially if you can conveniently leave something else in the car that will give you a good excuse to go out and get the cake.

4.      4. On the day of the party, wait for the appropriate time to reveal that this is, in fact, a party. To do this, you will require the cake. It may be beneficial to move the cake to an indoors hiding place, as candles don’t necessarily fare that well outside.

5.      5. Sneak to the cake’s hiding place, insert and light candles, then quietly approach the gathering of people from a direction that the attendees will spot you before the party’s recipient does.

6.      6. Wait patiently for the guests to notice you’re holding a flaming cake in plain view.

7.      7. Join in the singing when the guests inevitably start.

8.      8. Surprise!

9.      9. Continue on with the get-together plans as if nothing were different – except now there’s cake. After all, why spoil perfectly good plans by changing them?

And, thus, you have created a perfect, introverted surprise party so thoroughly that no one except you even knew it was a party. Pretty surprising, right?

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Camera Shy

            As I worked on starting my YouTube channel, I encountered something I never had before. Camera shyness. It’s something that seems like it would suit me – as I’m extremely shy and introverted in the first place – but this was more than I would have expected. It was – literally – paralyzing.

            When I set up to film for the first time, I sat down in front of the camera and... froze. I knew what I wanted to say, I’d run some tests earlier in the week without problems, but now that I was filming something I was actually going to show people, I simply couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even reach out to press the record button.

            Now, I’ve experienced stage fright before, albeit in a roundabout way. I’ve been performing from a very young age – I believe I sang my first solo at the age of five, I became a semi-professional clown somewhere around ten, which later transitioned into being a magician, and, while I quit those around the age of twelve, I went on to be in a number of school choirs, bands, plays, and musicals.

            Though all of that, I never really felt nervous or afraid. Yet, the nerves were there. I only ever noticed them when I was singing a solo, and it took me a while to identify it, because I didn’t feel any different than normal. I merely trembled – such a small amount of a tremble that I’m fairly certain the audiences never even noticed.

            Yet there I was – sitting in front of an inanimate object, unable to move or speak. I couldn’t understand why – and I still can’t. After performing in front of a live audience, what’s so hard about performing in front of a camera? With a live performance, if something goes wrong, you just keep going as if it never happened and hope no one notices. On camera, you just say the line over again and edit out the parts you don’t like. It’s far easier.

            So, what was the problem? Was it that it was a new experience? Was it the permanence of what I was creating? Was it the absence of audience (it is rather difficult to talk to a device as if it were a person)? Was I just not ready yet? I doubt I’ll ever know.

            Obviously, I overcame the camera shyness. Not that day, though. I gave up and left it for a couple days before tying again. This time, I was still nervous, but not so much that I couldn’t record. And each subsequent week of filming, the feeling has faded a little more, to a point where it is now nearly nonexistent and I’ve almost forgotten there was a time when it was impossible for me to film.

            Now, here I am, having just completed my sixth video and reminiscing about that fist shaky start. The message in this story? Perseverance. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.