responding to a conversation I had this weekend

 To some extent I understand the logic of, I'm going to give people I care about a hard time or challenge them or antagonize them because I want to inoculate them against the people out in the world who are going to do that. But I think the emphasis should overwhelmingly be placed on caring and understanding. I'd put it at ratio of 9 parts understanding and support to 1 part teasing. 

Yeah I'm sure if someone only ever received support and never got any push back, they'd probably be overly devastated when some stranger tried to antagonize them. But I think the inverse is way more dangerous. If you teach someone that the people who care about you are supposed to be mean to you, you're gonna end up drawn to horrible people OR you're not going to know how to assess someone who decides to show you support and they could be genuine and you don't trust them or they don't have your best interests and you can't see that because they're telling you things you've always wanted to hear. 

Priority number one should be being safe, stable, unequivocally supportive and that's your baseline you can work from. But if you don't have that then all the other stuff gets really screwy. 

ipad doodles

random bit of word thinking

 I was looking about the etymology for the word 'saint' and it was pretty boring. It was just some Latin word for sacred that sounds like saint.

But then I found the Old English version 'hallow' which shares the same root as 'holy' and basically in Old English the word for holy, 'halig' was derived from the word for 'whole' which was 'hailaz' and so a connection is made between things being sacred and divine and things being complete and healthy and whole. 

That's kinda cool I think. The Greek word 'hagios' also means divine and sacred but its connotation is 'different' or 'set apart from'. 

I think that's a very different sense of divine and I think the Greek sense is how most people interpret the word holy. The Old English version feels much more earthy and worldly. 

Which would you prefer? A divine that is separate and set apart or a divine that is healthy and complete and whole?

story from coaching at a climbing comp

 Today I was standing with this kid I coach and he's a great kid who got into climbing a little over a year ago and now he's competing in his first season and today was his third competition and it was at a gym that tends to set notoriously hard climbs. So we're standing there in front of this climb watching other people do it and making a plan and this kid I'm coaching is a good climber and he works really hard and I know he's going to be great if he wants to stick with it but there are still some moves that he's not as comfortable with and this climb looks like it's going to be a challenge for him. But he's got a great attitude and he's open to failing at things because he knows it's going to make him better in the long run.

This other kid is right in front of his, about to get on the climb, and the kid looks back and receives some directions from his coach and then he walks up to the start and sends the climb with relative ease. He looked good. He drops down to the mats and gets his scorecard from the judges and calmly walks back to where we are and his face immediately turns red and he begins sobbing uncontrollably. He sits down right in front of us and pulls his shirt over his face and keeps bawling. His coach walks over to comfort him and me and the kid I coach both kind of tastefully look away and act like we don't notice and after about 10 to 15 seconds of us standing in dead silence the kid I coach says, dry as a bone, 

"Well, that was encouraging."

I lost it. But then I had to quickly regain it because it looked like I was laughing at the crying kid which I wasn't.

one month of 2026 DOWN!

ha! easy work!

I could handle 11 more of these before this year gives up

just like all the others

Years I've Felled:

2005. 1998. 2013. 1994. 2020 AND 2021!

1994 was so easy for me I don't even remember anything from it. Barely a challenge at all.

I also still contend that I have a strong case to be considered The Baby That Toppled The Soviet Union.

All it took was exactly 8 months of me being alive and it was officially dissolved. 

"I am a time fish that swims through time at a rate of one second per second"

 when I was a kid I would go down the street to the neighbor's trampoline and jump around for what felt like hours and have really elaborate daydreams about what the world would be like if it was all snow and ice all the time everywhere. In the daydreams I would slide and zoom around and hang out in these cool underground snow tunnels. 

Today I got to live out that fantasy in real life and like most things my stupid child mind came up with, it was actually terrible. I couldn't take two steps without almost slipping and busting my entire self. Took me like an hour to do my normal walk. You see all the car exhaust on the snow and think 'dang we really live like this huh?'

No but actually it was pretty fun. I've never seen a large clear field of smooth shining unbroken ice. 

things that played on repeat in my head while I was digging my car out of the ice yesterday

 he has songs of wildebeests and angels. he has soared on the wings of a demon...

are you really letting a MAN block your shine right now? a MAN block your shine?

don't pop your tire with the chisel don't pop your tire with the chisel don't pop your tire with the chisel

and if you don't love me now, you will never love me again, I can still hear you saying I would never break the chain

One way you could think about the weather is that every day there's a new weather-related challenge for you to overcome but usually in Central Virginia the challenge isn't very hard. nearly non-existent even. So it's not a very good way to think about the weather.