Todd Grooms avatar

When I was sixteen, I remember the joy of obtaining my driver’s license. I was umpiring little league baseball at the time and shared my accomplishment with the other umpire. He flashed his pilot’s license at me: “You haven’t earned shit until you earn this one.”

#mbnov

Thanksgiving has long been my favorite holiday. When I was younger, the Thanksgiving feast was the main draw. The thoughtful introspection and time spent with family members in my household is now the main reason for the affection I feel towards this holiday.

#mbnov

Our Halloween tradition includes building our Trader Joe’s Haunted Halloween cookie house. I love sharing this activity with the kids.

One of the unfortunate experiences of preferring git CLI: entering git restore . instead of git restore --staged ..

Justin Herbert and the Chargers are wildly entertaining to watch. I don’t watch them often, but it seems like every game of theirs I do end up watching is a thriller.

Stuff

We are currently having improvements made on our home. The drywall has needed repairs since we moved in. We neglected to have the work done before moving in due to the time commitment of finding someone to perform the work while managing a move at the same time. This is much needed maintenance and I will be happy once it is complete. However, the journey to that completion has been a slog.

The largest issue is “stuff.” What do we do with our “stuff?” The contractor we are working with will handle moving and protecting large pieces of furniture, but we need to move our “stuff” off of the furniture. That is a reasonable request, but it has been a stressful undertaking for me.

Our kids each have their own toys and books that end up strewn around the house. This is their “stuff.” Ensuring this “stuff” doesn’t consume our shared living space is a constant battle. Ashley and I also have our “stuff” littered throughout the home: books, memorabilia, and tchotchkes. As I was moving a few autographed hockey sticks around, my immediate thought became “why?” Why do we have this stuff? These items are not even on display. We have moved them three times now and we have never displayed them in any of our residences. Why do I feel the need to pack them around with us? Why do I feel compelled to protect them in a half-assed manner? These items are not encased or stored properly. These items may have some monetary value, but these items will not fetch that much if sold. Yet, I feel compelled to keep and care for these items. Why?

Separation Failures

Over the last eight months or so, I’ve had difficulty separating work from my personal life. I have been unable to disconnect, which has left me with a low level hum of anxiety as a constant companion. To be clear, I am not working all the time; rather, I just carry work with me without release, no empty space to occupy my thoughts when I’m off the clock. I have been unable to sit in the moment in my downtime, unable to just enjoy or relax.

One stressor in this is that when I’m off the clock from work, I’m on the clock as father. There is no break, no rest, no solace. I chug through the work day and push through the evening for those one or two hours (if I am lucky) of “me” time. Once that time is available, I then feel guilt for not accomplishing more, not working more, not being involved as a husband or as a father more. Time is fleeting and our most precious commodity; once it is spent, there is no reclaiming it. It is finite and in high demand. I’ve been reading a 300 page book for months because I will not permit myself the time to just read.