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To What Is, not What Might Have Been

Unanswered prayers. Twists of fate. Unfulfilled desires. Foiled plans. Typically, phrases like these evoke negative images for us. Our minds conjure thoughts of “the one that got away,” be it a person, a job, an opportunity, or something entirely different. We kind of enjoy torturing ourselves this way because the idea of “what might have been” can make for a very compelling story. There are movies, books, and songs written in lamentation about what was lost. It’s also a common storytelling trope to have the protagonist revisit the missed opportunity years later.

But isn’t that all just imagination? That’s literally what “wishful thinking” is. We concoct our own little story about what could have happened if circumstances had unfolded differently, and it just so happens that >gasp< it would have been SO wonderful, if only… Today I say: Hogwash. Fiddlesticks. Malarkey. Poppycock. Baloney. [Insert your favorite old-timey dismissive phrase here.] Twists of fate are a part of life, whether you believe God has a hand in what happens to you or not. That’s why there’s an adage that “if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.” We’re like kids at Christmas. Make our list of gifts, talk to Santa, hint to our parents, and cross our fingers that we’ll get what we want. And remember, we also make choices all the time, every day. And sometimes a single choice has a significant effect, creating a chain of proverbial dominos that fall to produce our circumstances – sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Remember, too, that we are also often affected by other people’s choices, so even when we’ve planned and prepared and prayed and chosen wisely – some other choice, some other circumstance, some other event impacts us and throws off our proverbial path. And while it may seem crushing to us in the moment, I’m here to tell you it’s often for the best.

Last week, I wrote about the choice I made with my wife to marry each other 31 years ago. It’s a choice that feeds me positively each day, but a mere 5-6 years earlier, things could have been different. I had dated a young lady for a couple of years going back to high school. We broke up after she left for college, but one summer we reconnected and began to get kind of serious, even discussing whether we might be interested in marrying. Then she went back to school and met someone else – the man who would ultimately become her husband. (They’ve been happily married for 35 years.) After that second breakup, I immersed myself in school, embarking on my first semester since high school where I made straight A’s. I also worked a lot, did some traveling, and eventually met my future wife. Time for a pop culture reference – Ted Lasso: “It may not work out how you think it will or how you hope it does. But believe me, it will all work out, exactly as it’s supposed to.” And for both myself and my old girlfriend from high school, it absolutely did.

Fast forward to 2025, when I finally completed the steps need to retire from K-12 public education. I wrote about how I had actually applied for one more administrative role in a nearby district, and I honestly believe I was on the cusp of getting hired. Then I received the dreaded “we’ve selected a different candidate e-mail.” Curses! Foiled again! Or was I? Ironically, I read that e-mail on my phone in a medical center waiting room while my wife underwent a scan for breast cancer tissue. That test eventually came back positive for “cancerous material” — not really cells, more like particles. So she had to undergo more tests and a surgical procedure, along with follow-up appointments. Guess who was by her side every minute? This guy…without ever having to give a thought to whatever work I was missing or would have to catch up on at my new job. I truly consider it a blessing that I could have zero other concerns during that time. Just her. And shortly after that situation was resolved, along came a part-time opening working in the office at my church parish. So instead of more potentially soul-crushing work in education, I landed in a calmer job that supplements my retirement income while allowing me time and flexibility to continue to build my voiceover career. The plan didn’t go off the rails; it just shifted to some different rails that, in the end, have followed a better path.

See, I’ve already had career plans go off-kilter in the past, and learned hard lessons from trying to “reset the plan.” It actually wasn’t all that long ago – a mere 8 years. I was working in Mansfield ISD at the time, under Dr. Teresa Stegall’s leadership in the Department of Research, Assessment, and Accountability. I’ve spoken fondly of Dr. Stegall’s leadership before. Right around this time in 2018, she retired from public education, receiving a well-deserved fond farewell from many in the district. She had previously informed me that she hoped for me to take over as Director of the department and had involved me in several tasks in preparation for the role. I had worked with central administrators and principals on a variety of projects, and I felt poised to step into the job. Trouble is, in the month after her retirement, the rest of us in the department heard nothing about the future – the Director position was never posted, and we were simply carrying on without a director. We heard rumors, but nothing definitive. Until the last Friday of February 2018, when Dr. Stegall’s supervisor met with us to inform us that the district was not, in fact, replacing her as Director. They were instead dissolving the position, using the money from that salary for other purposes, and placing our department under the supervision of a different Director in central administration. What’s more, we were charged with revising our duties to absorb the tasks of the Director, AND we had to take the department’s budget and devise our plan for the 2018-19 school year. Rug, yanked. Gut, punched. What the heck, I’ll even go there: Nuts, kicked. My plan had been to transition into a promotion, ramp up the VO career a little more, then retire from MISD – the only district where I had ever worked – after 30-35 years, then move into VO full-time. Instead, throughout my 25th year in the district, I found myself a little overworked, a little bitter, and a little bit off the rails.

So when I tried to regain control of the plan by bolting for Birdville ISD in the Spring of 2019, my hope was to get back onto my rails, albeit elsewhere. But it was a brutally failed effort that I’ve talked about briefly before. I don’t really want to relive it or recount details of how awful it was; it was mainly a year I’d like to forget. I suppose the most powerful thing I could say is that, when the COVID pandemic shut us down in March 2020, I was actually a little relieved. For the final six weeks of that year, I didn’t have to make the drive to Haltom City each day for a job that was slowly driving me insane. Work-from-home agreed with me, even if I had to conduct a job search for 2019-20 via Zoom. And even then, after my attempt at restoring the rails to a previous career path flamed out, there was yet another twist of fate that delivered me to Grand Prairie High School, working with a group of people who were mostly doing their absolute best to serve a student population that needed it. I made many lifelong friends there and encountered colleagues who I admired greatly. I learned from them, and I was able to teach them some things while keeping them entertained; and keeping them sane amidst the insanity that TEA and the district expected me to bring them as the testing coordinator. That is, until I finally had the wherewithal to bring my education career to a close and pursue voiceover full-time.

Do I regret my choice to leave Mansfield for Birdville? Not really. Given the events of February 2018, chances are that there might have been more potential gut punches along the way. The precedent had been set, and staying there could have sent a message that I would simply solider on, regardless of the circumstances. I’ve said before – central administration in education can be a little soul-crushing. That’s the nature of it. One of my colleagues in that department had a Ph.D in Statistics, and there’s a good chance that he might’ve been selected over me for the Director position. A choice to remain in MISD could have definitely produced some other twist, possibly worse than what I had already experienced. That year of misery in Birdville was at least instructive. I learned from it, as we often do from a painful experience. And just like Ted Lasso said, it did work out exactly as it was supposed to. I’ll take the exploits that I had and the friends I made at GP, thank you very much. And I’ll take the time supporting my wife instead of another central office job, as well. I have landed where I wanted to be – escaped from what had become an increasingly insane and stressful world of education, engaged more fully in the world of voiceover, and most of all, available more completely to my wife and family. Unanswered prayers? No, just different answers than I expected. Foiled plans? No, just slightly altered plans. Unfulfilled desires? No, As the great Sheryl Crow sang: “It’s not getting what you want, it’s wanting what you’ve got.” As it turns out, what I’ve got IS what I wanted. The path to get there is just not what I envisioned at one time.

The path can vary for many of us. I have two friends who have had similar experiences recently, where their intended professional plans have been altered by circumstances. One of them is currently teaching in New Mexico and had actually interviewed for the same position in the DFW area twice, finishing second both times. His current situation in NM isn’t the greatest, but it’s also not the worst, so his goal is simply to carve a different path back to DFW, and possibly back to New Mexico another time. Meanwhile, one of my friends from GPHS was passed over for that campus’ Principal position when it was open in 2024. She’s having to toil at another campus – again, not the greatest job – but her personal life has thrived even though she’s not where she wants to be professionally, and those personal developments wouldn’t have been possible at all if she was Principal of a 6A high school. There’s still plenty of time for her to achieve her professional goals. Again, it’s just going to be a different path, and there’s nothing wrong with that. We all live and learn along the way, carrying whatever knowledge, experience, and growth that are gained.

In the world of voiceover, “rejection” is a natural part of the process, a way of life. My friends in the VO world are used to hearing “No” in the face of grand plans. Really, they’re prepared for “No” after every audition. Except that it’s not necessarily “No,” it’s just “Not Right Now,” as they say. Just because someone else is booked for a given VO job doesn’t mean you weren’t good, or worthy; it just means that whoever made the casting decision selected a different voice for this project, for a reason that could be very specific or very ambiguous. And that’s really the point of this post: Unanswered prayers, unfulfilled desires, twists of fate, foiled plans don’t necessarily reflect on us as individuals. They don’t mean we’re not valuable as people, or professionals, or artists. They just mean that this isn’t the right match, the right time or place, the right circumstances. Not Right Now. But we keep at it, working toward what we seek. Enjoy the journey. Learn what you can. Value the good things and the good times. Seek, and you will find. Right Now will eventually come along, and What Is will outshine What Might Have Been.

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Gotta Have Soul, Mate

This week’s post coincides with what I consider one of the 3 most important times of the year. You might think, “He’s talking about the resolve to maintain your New Year’s Resolutions,” based on one of my previous posts. Or perhaps you suspect it includes my thoughts on Valentine’s Day. But more important to me than literally any Valentine’s celebration is the anniversary of the wedding of myself and my better half on this date, January 28. Today we will celebrate the completion of 31 years or marriage.

“Awwww,” you might say. And that’s fine, although I am definitely not a person of extraordinary sentiment. Sure, my wife and I love each other deeply, but if anything, we are extraordinarily private about it. Anyone expecting to see PDA from the two of us will be sorely disappointed. What you will see from us, more than anything, is a personal rapport that we share. Plainly put, we get along at a fascinating level. Not all the time, but more than enough. We use the phrase “hashtag married” (#married) way more than we have ever expected, so much that we will literally each hold out two fingers toward each other to create the hashtag symbol. Maybe it’s cute; I don’t know. In some ways, I consider it akin to a pair of Mandalorians saying “This Is The Way.” Our little ritual.

Our road to such rituals has been interesting, but it’s not like we overcame any epic hurdles to get here. I was born in El Paso, Texas (Native Texan, baby!) and moved to Arlington shortly after my 3rd birthday. She was born on Long Island, New York, moved to the Houston area as a child, then came to Arlington in her early teen years, a little more than a decade after I arrived. We actually lived within 5 minutes of each other and even went to the same high school, but because I was 3 years older than she was, we never attended the same school campus through grade 12. Our high school only had Grades 10-12 under one roof at the time, and junior high was Grades 7-9. We actually met once when I was a freshman at UT-Arlington, introduced to each other by the girl I was dating at the time. But it wasn’t until I was a senior at UTA and she was a freshman that we started dating, connecting as members of the “band without football,” the UTA Marching Band. Some people might think we dated too long, because it took 4 years, 5 months, and 4 days for me to propose. That may seem like an eternity to some, but I think we both wanted to have a decent foothold as real human adults with careers and a mild sense of independence before we crossed the threshold of living life together.

Having heard that story, and if you observe our endearing rapport (truly, we are kind of cute together), you might even say, “Gosh, you two are real soulmates.” But here’s the thing: I don’t subscribe to the traditional notion of soulmates. The whole concept of “someone’s lobster” from Friends is purely fictional, IMO. I am very much an empirical guy. Even though I didn’t stick with math as a major in college (it was my initial choice), I’m definitely someone who believes in the power of math to bind the world together. (Shoutout once again to Pythagoras.) Numbers don’t lie. And the numbers say that the concept of one singular soulmate for each human simply cannot work. There are currently over 8 billion people on Earth. Even back in 1989, the year that my wife and I started dating, there were just over 5 billion people. With that kind of astronomical number, the notion that there was a single individual destined for me – someone who was of the opposite sex and heterosexual like myself, age appropriate, with similar interests, upbringing, and values – I mean, come on. Oh, and she happened to live incredibly close to where my family had moved 18 years earlier, and we even attended the same church even though we didn’t know it yet. That just doesn’t work, mathematically speaking. If there was such a person, probability at least suggests that this person might not live nearby – heck, she might live in another country across the globe and speak an entirely different language. 

So for me, the likelihood that there was one, true soulmate who I could ultimately marry was low. Incredibly low. Given the rate of divorce in the United States, the likelihood that most of the people getting married on January 28, 1995 – or literally every other date since then – are soulmates, is also shockingly low. Even the families of myself and my wife suggest this. I have four siblings — one has been married and divorced, the other three married people who were, themselves, previously married and divorced. My wife has three siblings, one of whom has been married and divorced and is currently married to a man who was also previously married and divorced. Another sibling is unmarried, and the third has been married to the same woman for 15 years now (first time for both there – so there’s one besides us). The point is, seeking and finding “your one true soulmate” is, by and large, an exercise in futility, mathematically speaking. At the most, if soulmates exist, then it would be more likely for each person on the planet to have multiple potential soulmates walking among us, and the trick, if there is one, is to find each other and offer enough effort and flexibility in our lives to become actual soulmates. This person doesn’t have to be your destiny, fated strictly for you, to make it possible to be with them. Sometimes you just have to step up and ask her out, then if she is compatible for you, put in the work with her to make the relationship flourish and grow.

But here is the bottom line, on this day of our 31st Wedding Anniversary: Regarding my own empirical biases and mathematical thinking, it really doesn’t matter. Is my wife the single, true soulmate who was created just for me? My sole soulmate, if you want to get punny? Who cares? I found her, and she found me. We fell in love, got married, and built a life together of which I am incredibly proud and for which I am incredibly grateful. That life has never been perfect – and neither are we – but we’ve been perfect for each other, and that’s really all that matters. If you read my post earlier in January, referencing Pythagoras’ quote, “Choices are the hinges of destiny,” then you can understand the critical effects of our choice on this date 31 years ago. That choice established our destiny together. It changed us, focused us. I firmly believe it’s made us better as individual people. We can share our love of sports, movies, music and musical theater, art, and animals, among other things. We can endlessly quote Grosse Pointe Blank without missing a beat. As two people who are honestly fairly cynical about Valentine’s Day, we even get to ignore it by celebrating our wedding anniversary two weeks earlier instead. That’s our choice, together.

I’m reminded of a favorite movie of ours, The Family Man, and its best line of dialogue:

“I love you, and that’s more important than our address. I choose us.”

If you’re familiar with that movie, then you also know the implications of the fateful choice – that it might come with some perceived limitations. We may give up certain things in terms of career, living arrangements, and perhaps material wealth when we prioritize relationships. But that’s actually the whole point of the movie, and of married life itself: Whatever “could have been” matters not to me; what matters is what we have, who I am as a result, and what is. Maybe my life is different with her than it would have been without her. I don’t know, but more importantly, I’m really not interested in knowing. Our married life, our existence as a family, are what matter most. Yes, there are challenges. There are times when one or the other of us is infuriating to the other. There are disagreements. But that’s part of being human, part of “For Better, For Worse,” isn’t it? And for us, “For Better” happens much more often. The challenges are minimal in the grand scheme of things. How about another pop culture reference, this time from the great Leslie Higgins on Ted Lasso: “If you’re with the right person, even the hard times are easy.”

When it’s all said and done, there is one person whose hand I want to hold during a concert, a musical, a walk in the park, or anyplace else. There is one face I want to see before I go to bed at night and first thing each morning. A face that I can always pick out in a crowd. There is one person with whom I always want to share the events of my day, my fears, my dreams, my very life. At the same time, I want her to have her own life and share it with me. Our lives don’t have to revolve around each other – she certainly doesn’t exist solely to serve me and our family, which is how I’ve come to view my own mother’s life. (That’s another topic I’ll have to unpack later.) But our lives create harmony together in a way that enhances each of us as individuals and feeds our family in a very beautiful and fulfilling way. Does that make us soulmates? I don’t know. I don’t care. What I do know is: I choose us. Happy Anniversary, sweetheart.

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Bring on the Next One

Today is New Year’s Eve, and the second of my Top 3 favorite holidays is the magical combination of New Year’s Eve / New Year’s Day. I wrote back in November about the first one – Thanksgiving. And I will write about the third of my Top 3 when it arrives in 2026. But for today, I have to say I love me some New Year.

No doubt, there are some who love NYE for the booze, the partying, the dancing, the Ball Drop, the confetti and fireworks, and all the other ceremony that goes with the night. And I guess there’s nothing wrong with it, if it’s your thing. Personally, I’ve never been a huge party guy, nor a heavy drinker. Growing up, I typically watched New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with the great Dick Clark. Watch the Ball Drop, then stay up an extra hour until midnight officially occurs in the Central time zone and call it a year. As I got older, I celebrated at small gatherings at friends’ homes, but never attended the large parties you hear about.

Then on December 31, 1994, my wife (at the time, my fiancée) and I went to a NYE party at a hotel in Dallas just before we married in January 1995. It was cool – we were young and obviously excited as we rang in the year of our impending marriage in a large gathering. It was something neither of us had ever done before. In ensuing years, we attended big NYE parties a few more times, including overnight hotel stays and breakfast the next morning. Those were fun times for a newly married couple, but we’ve outgrown them. These days, with our kids (who are quintessential home-bodies), New Year’s Eve consists of a quiet night at home. We compile some finger foods and munch away while watching a movie, then turn on one of the national NYE broadcasts from New York to see coverage of the Ball Drop, which happens at 11:00pm local time. In fact, anymore we actually go to bed right afterward and don’t even stay up until midnight. The big countdown in Dallas-Fort Worth just pales in comparison to what happens in New York, so rather than stay up for an anti-climax, we just call it a year early and get that hour of sleep. Some may call us boring; I consider us smart.

We have toyed with the idea of taking a bucket-list trip to New York specifically for NYE. There are hotels in Times Square with rooftop views of the Ball Drop, and we would definitely opt for something like that instead of standing all day with 500,000 of our closest friends, hoping we don’t have to go to the bathroom too often. Sure, those hotels have to be booked years in advance, with a minimum 5-night stay at a premium price. But it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and someday we might actually do it.

All reminiscing and fantasizing aside, my love for New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day comes down to two fundamental reasons. First, it’s still technically Christmas, only less stressful. See, I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Christmas Day. It’s awesome as a central holiday in the year, and there is nothing quite like singing “O Come, All Ye Faithful” at Midnight Mass. I tear up literally every time. I also enjoy many things about the Holiday Season – Christmas music, lights, decorations, movies, almost all of it. But what drives me insane about Christmas is simply “the rush” during the days leading up to December 25. The rush to buy things. The rush to do things, like make this dish for that gathering, or go to this other event because it’s a tradition. The rush is always tiring, and too often it’s easy to sacrifice quality for volume. And before you know it, it’s Christmas Day, and by the night of December 25, you’re just tired. Plus there’s a major letdown because it’s over until next year, when we’ll rush, rush, rush again in hopes of buying, getting, and doing it all in preparation for another December 25.

Except Christmas isn’t actually over yet, and it took me many years to truly appreciate that. After all, there are twelve days of Christmas, right? That leads to the Epiphany and the arrival of the Three Kings. In the Catholic Church, we officially celebrate Christmastide until the Baptism of the Lord a week later. And hardcore traditionalists may even celebrate Christmas until Candlemas on February 2 and the Presentation of the Lord. Now that is some serious Christmas celebration, along with perhaps a great excuse why you still have lights on your house.

Either way, I have always enjoyed the celebration of the New Year because it’s Christmas without the proverbial baggage. You still get to enjoy the decorations, the music, the free time, and the celebration, just without all the pressure. I cannot believe that there are people who actually complain that they forget what day of the week it is between December 25 and December 31. That’s the beauty of it! The freedom to relax and simply enjoy is rare and precious. Forgetting the day of the week is affirmation that you’re experiencing such freedom.

Beyond the extension of the Christmas season, I appreciate the New Year celebration secondly because it commemorates conclusion and commencement. I’ve always been fascinated by this phenomenon. Everything has a beginning and an end – seasons, years, life itself. There’s an inherent beauty in it. Think about it: Everyone loves Opening Day of the baseball season, a beginning. Millions watch the Super Bowl, an ending. We tune into the season finale or series finale of our favorite shows.  We’re excited about the beginning of a particular season, and we have bittersweet feelings at its conclusion – yet we also cherish the memories and lessons of the experience. We rejoice when babies are born, and when someone dies, we honor their memory at least one more time as we grieve. These are all beautiful things.

I suspect my own admiration for beginnings and endings could be why I gravitated toward education as a career. It’s certainly something I enjoyed about it. The first day of school is exciting. The last day of school, even more so. Everybody is happy on graduation day. Surely one of the greatest things about a school year is that it begins and ends, and the rhythm of that process is fulfilling. I also think, for a lot of people, the never-ending quality of a job outside of education is one of the things that makes it awful. Some jobs never seem to have an end. And let’s face it, the term “fiscal year,” and the concept of it, is hardly exciting or fulfilling for the average worker.

But the calendar year? You almost have to love it. I do. I love how the end of a given year brings retrospectives – about the events of the past 12 months, the lives that were lost, the lives that began, and the lives that changed, grew, and prospered. For me, 2025 brought significant changes – I’ve already outlined many of those in a previous post. I lost a couple of friends this year – one suddenly, one after an extended illness. But I’ve also met new friends and strengthened connections to old ones. I don’t feel the need to detail everything or offer a lot of personal description. The point of this post is that, for all of us, the chance to close the metaphorical book, the ability to reflect on it all at this time of year is, in a word, wonderful.

Also wonderful? Hope for the coming year. But I’m not necessarily talking about typical New Year’s Resolutions. Too often, those resolutions are outcome based – “I’m going to lose 20 pounds,” “I’m going to make more money,” etc. Outcome-based goals often sound nice, but they’re actually kind of a trap. The truth is that you and I have no idea what outcome we can achieve, nor do we know specifically how we’ll get there, or even if we will. Outcomes are affected by many factors over which we have zero control. I found outcome-driven goals to be a complete waste of time in my education career because of the lack of control over the student population. Outcomes are every bit as useless when developing New Year’s Resolutions. 

But what is useful in setting goals is the practice of deciding to adjust that which we can control. In deciding New Year’s Resolutions, we absolutely know which behaviors we can correct, or at least adjust, going forward. I have a personal, modest list of New Year’s Resolutions. Although I’m not going to delineate those in this space – because you, the reader, probably don’t care that much about what I plan to work on in 2026 – I can definitely say that they will be things over which I have direct influence. And as such, adjusting these behaviors should directly impact me.

What’s the most important aspect of these resolutions? They’re daily. Sure, maybe you want to achieve a certain milestone by the midpoint of the year, June 30, but the real journey to get there begins on January 1. And continues on January 2, January 3, and so on until you finally reach June 30 and beyond. That’s the real challenge – crafting New Year’s Resolutions that allow you to wake up each morning and reiterate, “Today I’m going to…,” and more importantly, do it. It takes patience. It takes time. It takes persistence. Whatever the resolution, it takes the will to avoid whatever behavior you’re leaving behind and replacing it with whatever behavior you seek to pursue, to reinforce, to feed. And what you feed, grows.

The daily nature of effective New Year’s Resolutions is, honestly, what makes them a little ironic, and why so many people establish ineffective resolutions. We experience a huge build-up to the Holiday Season, it culminates with New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, and then we embark on the coming year. And we’ll do it all again in just under 12 months. So it’s natural that the plans we make for each year are grand, not minor and routine. Yet the grandeur is precisely what makes them fruitless. It’s like pretending you can eat a giant meal in just a few minutes, thinking you can read a long book in the next hour, attempting to writing a term paper in one afternoon, or cramming for a final exam when you’ve skipped class all semester. It’s also probably why, in recent years, I lament to my wife that everybody makes a huge deal out of “ringing in the new year,” but they don’t think anything of it when the clock strikes midnight on a random Tuesday in August. Obviously, each new year can feel like a gift, but why don’t we treat each day with the same gratitude?

And yet, despite the irony, I really love the sentiment of closure and renewal that each New Year’s celebration brings. Not because the vast majority of people will make extravagant plans for the coming year that they will abandon before the end of February, but because it serves as an excellent marker in life. That marker is a perfect point for cataloging where the last 365 days went right and wrong, then deciding the daily habits to begin, re-establish, or reinforce for the coming 365 days. Whatever your plans for 2026, I wish you a safe, fun New Year’s Eve, and as The Christmas Waltz says, “May your New Year dreams come true.” Here’s hoping you’re able to persist peacefully and productively in making them happen.

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Little Things That Matter

Next Tuesday 12/23 will be Festivus 2025 for those who celebrate, and as a longtime Seinfeld fan with a blog, I will definitely be engaging in the Airing of Grievances that day. But lest I seem like a typical curmudgeon who does nothing but grouse and complain in my blog, I want to use the space this week to express appreciation for lots of little things in the world. It’s not really a personal gratitude post like I made at Thanksgiving; this post is devoted to random good things I observe at times (and yes, I do manage to notice lots of cool things at least as much as I perceive idiocy). And it’s designed to acknowledge the benefit of such things.

Some of the items in this post may, no doubt, elicit cynical and/or negatives responses from some readers. That says more about the reader’s experience than anything else. Remember that I’m writing from the perspective of my own experience, mainly over the past year, but often over the course of several years. So if your experience is different, feel free to address it in your own Festivus Grievances next week.

Let’s dive right in—

Supportive Parents of School-Age Children: This thought actually originated in the fall when I was announcing marching band shows and witnessing multitudes of parents assisting in the parking lot and on the field. A typical marching band production costing thousands of dollars and involving hundreds of students could not happen without the service of these parents, and I wanted to acknowledge that. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that in every aspect of education, supportive parents are crucial. Much like with problem students, educators often end up devoting way too much time to dealing with problem parents – the ones who complain to the coach that their child isn’t playing enough, isn’t first chair, doesn’t make 100s on every assignment…you know the type. It’s time we acknowledge that we see the supportive parents, and we appreciate them. The parents who work with their children to reinforce good behaviors, to improve academic habits, and to practice more. The parents who always bring their children early to school and to events, and who are there on-time ready to take them home at the end. The parents who attend every game, every show, every performance, every concert, not to complain to the refs or the coaches, not to criticize the performance, but to cheer their child’s team, win or lose, to applaud the performance regardless of minor mistakes. The parents who take care of other children who need it. The parents who devote their time and energy to this school or this program because their child loves participating, and they want to help make it a good experience. These parents need to be seen and credited, and even though they can never be shown enough appreciation, they must know that there are countless teachers, coaches, directors, and other adults who value them.

City Services: I live in Arlington, Texas, and have since 1971. The city’s population has more than quadrupled in my lifetime. As much as people will recognize my hometown as the home of the Dallas Cowboys and Texas Rangers, or the home of Six Flags Over Texas, or the “Entertainment Capital of Texas,” or “The American Dream City,” there are factions that criticize Arlington for being too big now, or for not having enough culture, or a variety of other perceived shortcomings. And I have personally experienced times when I have been unhappy with street conditions and other aspects of the city. But in the end, what I’ve grown to appreciate about Arlington are the multitude of city services available here that are top-notch. For one, this city has an amazing selection of parks. I’ve become an avid walker and runner – typically 2+ miles of one or the other each morning – and I am fortunate that this city has at least a half-dozen parks accessible to me with excellent trails to pursue, all within a 10-minute drive from my house. Additionally, although we haven’t needed them this year (thankfully), we have had need of the Arlington Police and Fire Departments in years past, and they have also been amazing in our experience. My oldest son, who has autism, has a job for which he needs transportation, and we’re able to use Arlington’s Handitran service for him on roughly 95% of his work days. It’s safe, reliable, and cost-effective transportation for him. We’re grateful that it easily allows him to get to work, and it also gives him a level of independence rather than relying on his parents all the time. Speaking of transportation, I had occasion to ride the Trinity Railway Express into downtown Dallas recently for a voiceover event. TRE connects to the DART railway system in Dallas, and again – safe, reliable, cost-effective transportation. The one thing I still wonder about with Arlington is why we don’t have public transportation, and why we haven’t gotten connected to DART. It seems rather short-sighted to me that Arlington voters have denied access to service like this in the past, and I’m frankly disappointed that there are municipalities to the east who are actually considering abandoning DART. As someone who loves to visit New York, and who has no problem navigating that area’s subways and trains, I find the reliance on constant automobile transportation in Dallas-Fort Worth to be exhausting at times. So I would hope that any suburbs that break from DART pursue a different option. And I think it’s worth pursuing light rail as a city or even statewide service instead of just building another tollroad. Either way, I think Arlington’s city services are worth acknowledging, and I appreciate them daily.

Competent, Courteous Drivers: Because of the lack of public transportation options in my area, I find myself driving most of the time, as do most of the residents of the DFW area (and most of Texas, for that matter). And while it is proverbial low-hanging fruit to complain about clueless drivers (I will include a very specific grievance next week) all the time, I want to acknowledge the competent, courteous drivers, instead, in this space today. And I think there are actually more of them out there than we think. Again, we devote our energy to the problems without appreciating the level of quality actually on the road. Another recent experience: I also had to travel to downtown Dallas twice by car recently, and both times, I exited the city via the Woodall Rogers Freeway to I-35E. Anyone familiar with that area knows that the right lane entering the freeway also serves as the exit for traffic headed from I-35E to the Dallas North Tollway. So there’s a stretch of road with lots of merging – drivers like me moving one lane to the left while other drivers move one lane to the right. Let me tell you this: few things on any road are better than a dependable merging experience, where drivers are signaling, paying attention, matching speeds, and switching lanes simultaneously so that each gets where they need to be smoothly and safely. I experienced this on two consecutive days in Dallas, and both times, I waved to the drivers switching places with me to thank them. I hope they saw and appreciated this little thing as much as I did. I experience this frequently on I-20 in Arlington, as well, between Cooper St and Matlock Rd. There are far more courteous, competent drivers in those areas than there are bad ones. Sure, the bad ones going too fast and using lots of lanes draw our attention, but the good drivers need to greet each other more in solidarity. We need less honking, yelling, road rage, and all that entails on the road. We need more positive communication among the drivers for jobs well-done. Texas still has signs that say “Drive Friendly,” and we really should take more time to wave and acknowledge each other when drivers are doing things correctly.

Healthcare Professionals: I think this topic grows nearer and dearer to me as I age, but this year has been especially active for us when it comes to healthcare. I’ve already indicated the reasons why in my Thanksgiving post, and I also credited our excellent primary care physician. My wife worked with a host of healthcare professionals during her scans, biopsy, and surgery. I worked with several healthcare workers, as well. I had my first colonoscopy this fall. I realize that A) it means I’m old, and B) I probably should have had at least my second one by 57 years old. But I’m a bonafide coward who had put off the procedure, and I was quite nervous about it when the time came. Yet everyone I worked with through the process was patient and professional with me, compassionate about my trepidation and doing their best to assuage my fears. We’ve also worked with healthcare professionals who care for my mother, now 95 years old and living in hospice care in an assisted living facility. They care for her with an impressive level of integrity and grace. What I realize pondering all these experiences is just how exceptional everyone we’ve encountered has been. I’m talking every single individual – office staff, physician’s assistants, nurses, anesthesiologists, and of course, physicians…every one of these people we saw this year was terrific. Not once did we come across someone who seemed ornery, incompetent, flustered, frustrated, clueless, or even anxious. Anytime we dealt with healthcare professionals, it was clear that these people were, in fact, professionals. In retrospect, it was both astonishing and gratifying. At the same time, I’m frustrated for these people because we all know that the healthcare system in the US is, if not broken, then deeply flawed. Yet these workers continue to give excellent care within the confines of that system. That reflects a personal commitment that deserves a salute.

Event Planners: You might think, given how each of the previous items in this post seemed to imply a certain nobility, that this item seems odd. But hear me out on this. It’s easy to read the phrase “event planner” and conjure some type of pop cultural image, where the person involved is making massive sums of money managing lavish soirées. You know…the person wearing a headset to communicate with all the people under their charge as they give orders…in a movie, this person is typically a self-absorbed jerk, or the central character who’s too overworked and in need of some significant other to give life meaning, or perhaps even the comic relief. Maybe such people exist in the world, but the reality most of the time is that you’ve experienced the work of an event planner you’ve never seen, heard, or known. That person – a real person – earns a modest, nominal amount of money for the work, if any at all. Often, they’re either planning the event as an additional duty to their main job, or as a volunteer. And the goal of that individual is to craft and coordinate the best event possible for you as a member of a community. A show, a concert, a contest, a prom, a tournament, a spelling bee, a parade, a carnival, an athletic event, an awards program, a graduation. Someone is in charge of that event, trying to ensure that everyone involved knows what to do and actually does it when and how they’re supposed to. I often have the privilege of working with these people, because they need me to speak into a microphone at an appointed time to read a script, say a name, or deliver a message. I’ve talked in a previous post about how much I love contributing to a team in that role, but I also want to highlight here that we should all take opportunities to reflect on and appreciate the contributions of these people “in charge.” The vast majority are not doing it for large amounts of money; they’re doing it out of love for and commitment to the activity at hand and its participants. We, as citizens, community members, parents, family, and friends, desire to have memorable experiences for ourselves and our families, and that makes this work critical. Someone has to do it, and we should be appreciative of the people who step up and do.

Service Workers of all Types: Speaking of “someone has to do it,” let’s conclude by talking about service workers. My son, who I mentioned earlier, is one such worker. He’s one of thousands of workers in school cafeterias. For him, the work is stable and predictable, which is important for the nature of his autism; he craves routine. But from a broader perspective, I am quite proud of the work he does because anyone who’s spent time working in a school likely has an appreciation for all the work that goes into feeding the student population day-in and day-out. My own grandmother spent her career as a manager of a school cafeteria. Society often finds it easy to rag on the school lunch as something lame, but the truth is that it is extraordinary how well the system works. Heck, the general work involved in feeding the entire population of this planet, whether you’re talking about farming and ranching, fisheries, grocery stores, restaurants, food pantries, or anything else, is just this side of a miracle. And most of the people involved provide a service. And yet, for some reason American society so often looks down on them. Why? Why is it considered acceptable by some to denigrate the local barista or even the guy grilling burgers or making fries? Is it really OK to be awful to your server because the kitchen is slow? Is it acceptable to cuss out the fast food worker because they added mayo when you asked for none? Is it fathomable to look down on someone pouring your coffee when you work in an office job? Every single one of these people is a human being worthy of respect and dignity. The person changing your oil, rotating your tires, repairing your sink, replacing parts on your garage door, fixing the air conditioner, making your latte, cooking your food, bringing your food to the table, taking your garbage and recycling from your home, changing the sheets on your hotel bed, moving your baggage on and off the plane, serving your beer and hot dog. Humans. Every. Single. One. I don’t intend to get on a soapbox about living wages for all these people, but let’s at least commit to seeing them, recognizing their humanity, and showing some basic decency and respect.

The bottom line, in this post that preemptively seeks to counter the negative, albeit comedic, sentiments of Festivus, is that life is ultimately about trying to become a better person each day. Why bother getting up each morning if you’re not trying to become the best version of yourself? I think that’s why a different show, Ted Lasso, resonates so much with so many people, especially in this day and age. The central message of the show has always been to seek out the best version of us, to work constantly toward better. As someone who is acutely aware of the reality that I’m getting older and not, in fact, going to live forever, it’s all I really want now. I’m still going to have days when I falter in the quest to be a better person than I was yesterday, or last year, or last decade, or when I was only 30. But I’m still going to try. And particularly in this day and age, I think an important step in that direction is looking around and noticing the good things in this world. The little things. Noticing, acknowledging, and celebrating them.

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Ode to Black Friday

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, and I am particularly thankful for many things this year, as I posted yesterday. This morning, I resumed my daily ritual of morning walks/runs that I’ve adopted to improve my health. Typically, I head to one of the many lovely parks provided by the City of Arlington, and on my way this morning, I drove by a couple of retailers whose parking lots were populated with more cars than usual for that time of day. And something occurred to me that hadn’t resonated for many years: It’s Black Friday!

No, not the 1869 financial crisis. (He said, knowing most people wouldn’t be aware of any such event.) And not even the term from Philadelphia in the 1950s. (Feel free to look that one up, too.) I speak, of course, of the Day After Thanksgiving, when retailers like to pretend their accounting books go from the red (taking losses) into the black (making profits) thanks to the surge in holiday shopping. Because now that Thanksgiving is over, it’s time to gear up for Christmas. Commence the Christmas shopping.

A little personal history here: I grew up in a household that was very much built on a foundation of paper – books, magazines, and more than one daily newspaper. So I read a lot, although I will freely admit that I was more devoted to the periodicals than I was the books. I suspect it’s the part of me that decided to major in history in college; after all, newspapers and magazines that document what’s happening around us each day will become primary sources of historical knowledge in the future. I just know I preferred them.

Sundays, as it turned out, weren’t just for Mass. They also included the ritual of the Sunday paper. (And we had TWO!) If you recall, the Sunday newspaper in its heyday was packed. There were stories that had been built over the course of the week by the staff, additional features, additional opinions, more reader letters, and of course, ads. Lots and lots of ads, because retailers would publish their specials weekly. Now, as retailers began adopting Black Friday as a positive marketing tactic in the 1980s, the newspaper on Thanksgiving began to grow. Black Friday specials, and hence, more ads. The trend continued into the 1990s, and its growth was fairly organic. The “holiday doorbuster” came about, where a store that normally opened at 10:00am would open as early as 9:00, or even 8:00, or *gasp* 7:00am on the day after Thanksgiving. And they would feature limited-time specials that would expire at or shortly after the normal opening time. The idea, naturally, was to get you into the store earlier than normal, knowing that a given special might draw you, but you would still shop for additional items to get your Christmas shopping done. It was a classic marketing tactic, even if the special itself was a loss leader.

And I will freely admit, I loved it. There was something really cool about checking out the ads in the paper sometime on Thanksgiving Day (for me, usually after food and football), then getting up early on the day after Thanksgiving to shop a little. It was a neat break in the routine that said “It’s the Holidays.” I fondly remember 1996, when I headed to Kay-Bee Toys at The Parks at Arlington with my new sister-in-law so that I could get some cool toys for my niece and nephews on their doorbuster specials. Call me a sucker; I don’t care. I genuinely enjoyed it. I woke up at 6:00am to get to the mall by 7:00am for an 8:00am opening. There were perhaps 50 people waiting outside the store that morning, and everyone was actually very chill about what they wanted. No running, no stampeding, no yelling, no complaining. The employees didn’t seem to mind, either, since they only had to arrive a couple of hours earlier than normal. It was genuinely a fun experience. And these experiences remained fun for several years.

And then they killed it. The opening time kept getting earlier and earlier. Eventually, retailers started opening at midnight. The specials started getting more ridiculous in that they were much cheaper, but severely limited. That really only invites the madness, the running, the stampeding, the fighting, the complaining. The fun of Black Friday dissipated for me. I knew I was definitely done with it the year my in-laws camped out overnight outside Best Buy for the chance at a laptop for $500. A 6:00am wake-up during a holiday is fine, but I’m not sitting awake all night in the cold just to save some money. What’s worse is that the retailers started working with manufacturers to create specific Black Friday merchandise. You were no longer getting a normal item at a remarkable price; you were getting a once-only item that was created cheaply to sell to you cheap. Not the same.

Now, I realize that Frank Costanza created Festivus in 1997 in response to retail madness, and that was during the time when I still enjoyed Black Friday. I will admit that I never worked hard to get the specific hot toy of the year – no Cabbage Patch Kids or Tickle Me Elmo. I suppose that my experience might have been different if I was diving deep into Black Friday shopping instead of just dipping my toes.  I was at Kay-Bee instead of Toys R Us, where it probably was crazier. I might stop at Target, but never Walmart. I’m certain there are some people out there who worked retail in the 1990s, hated Black Friday back then, and think I’m insane for saying I used to enjoy it. That’s fair, and my perspective is no doubt framed by my personal experience. But the bottom line for me is that, as is often the case in the USA, marketers and retailers decided to take things past the point of diminishing returns. Too much of a good thing. Kill the goose that laid the golden egg.

Remember when Target, Walmart, and other stores actually opened on Thanksgiving Day? I can think of only one good thing about those days. My oldest, who has autism, would always be really wound up after spending Thanksgiving at two different houses with extended family from both his parents. So the ability to take him out to Grand Prairie Premium Outlets at 8:00pm on Thanksgiving so that he could walk with his father and release some energy was valuable. But I also recall feeling really terrible for the employees who had to leave their own families early that day to go to work. And I wondered about the benefits for the shoppers. Was it really worth it to go out on Thanksgiving Day to acquire more stuff?

Mercifully, those days are now behind us. But along the way, Black Friday has gone from an organic, interesting (and perhaps maddening) retail phenomenon to yet another contrived concoction of American advertisers. After the advent of Cyber Monday for online retailers, the actual concept of Black Friday has morphed into essentially a weeks-long festival of discounts online and in-store. If I had a nickel for every time I see “Black Friday Starts NOW” in my e-mail, I probably wouldn’t need to worry about saving any money on their special deals. The fact that retailers are willing to give us 15-30% off everything for a week or more is basically an admission that they’re inflating their margins most of the year. And instead of lower prices consistently feeding a stable retail environment that survives, if not thrives, we get inflated prices for much of the year with brief periods of unbridled spending, insane traffic, long lines, massive crowds, and a generally miserable experience.

And then there’s Small Business Saturday, “brought to you by American Express.” It was started in 2010 as a purported effort to support smaller stores who were harmed by the 2008 financial crisis. And while it seems like a well-meaning concept (because who thinks it’s a bad idea to help small business?), it is bitterly ironic that American Express is involved. Ask any small business owner, and they’ll freely tell you they cannot afford to accept American Express because the transaction fees for sellers are higher than nearly every other card. But then, irony in the USA appears to have quietly died many years ago, so who knows?

So Black Friday used to appeal to me, but it’s grown tiresome and I now actively seek to avoid it. And yet, I take heart in this development. My children are now grown, and their association with Christmas has evolved such that they value experiences and the spirit of the season far more than they do the quantity of presents under the tree. So we spend more of this season going out to see lights, watching movies, and of course, participating in Mass and other church activities. We still exchange a modest number of gifts among our family each Christmas, but we really have moved on from the consumer-driven aspects of the holiday. It’s refreshing. Meanwhile, I will always have my romanticized memories of a gentler time in American retail. And I will tip my hat to stores like REI, which closes on Black Friday for their “Opt Outside” initiative – they encourage everyone to avoid shopping and pursue an outdoor activity after all the food from Thursday. They even give their employees a paid day off to do the same. Sounds like a plan to me.