Counting Down

I remember a conversation I had with my mom when I was a kid. I'm trying to remember the context. I don't recall being very old, but I really can't place where we were, what we were doing, how it came up. Perhaps we were in a store like Target or K-mart. I have this same conversation sometimes with my own kids in that context, so I'm thinking it must have been there.

My mom made a comment about discontent in the form of always living for the next big thing. In this case, I remember we were talking about holidays. She said something like this...

I feel for people who are always living for the next big thing, the next holiday, the next day off work, the next vacation. It's like they don't have anything worthwhile in their lives, so they have to wait for some big event to be excited about.

It was a simple comment that hangs there as a memory with really nothing else attached to it.  But I thought of it today because I saw this picture posted on a news site.

And I liked it.

It made my life feel so much more bearable. Only 127 days until Christmas. That doesn't seem too terribly much. I'm wondering if it's too soon to make one of these:

When I think about the last year, I get overwhelmed pretty easily to then shift to thinking about the year ahead. I wonder how we'll make it through another year if it is like last year.

I haven't posted a lot about the various trials we faced this last year, but let's just say that I've learned a lot about mental health systems and spent a good amount of effort and time on legal battles advocating for my son. It's not fun. I'm not even sure yet if it's worthwhile.

We haven't reached conclusions on anything yet, so honestly, there are days when I wonder if all the time, effort, energy, and emotion that I've put into this year will pay off at all.

Regardless, I find myself trying to just get through to the next thing, sometimes wishing away the here and now to just fast forward to see what the outcome of all this stress will be.

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