A new year, a new beginning

I do this funny thing. Actually, if you ask around, I probably do many. But the one funny thing that I know I do is a mind wipe at midnight New Years Eve. How this wipe is done seems to change as the years go by. In my younger and wilder days, it might be by drinking myself into a stupor. Now that I'm older and wiser, I find that working out and reading normally does the trick.

This year, however, I built a Lego kit for the FLL Robotics tournament. FLL is the First Lego League and is a challenge to children age 8-14 to research a topic (a different one every year), complete a project of some sort highlighting that topic, do some sort of community outreach with the findings of their project work and finally and most notably, build a robot out of Legos that will perform as many missions on a predefined table as possible. I have volunteered for 3 years now in a variety of ways, but this year, I decided to help build the models that will be used at the State tournament and US Open that will be held in Dayton this year.

Now, I've built Lego things before. I've even made robots. But building the missions for the table is a whole new pile of plastic. I might have been a little over matched. There were over twenty models to build and nearly 1000 pieces of various shapes, sizes and colors in which to build them. Fortunately, they also included instructions. Since I've used Legos most of my life, I figured it would be easy. Until I got digging through the pieces. There were shapes I had never seen before! Legos cut on angles, slopes like a roof, hinge pieces, rubber bands that acted as belts to make things move, gears that caused a house to raise up when a lever was pulled and some pieces that looked like they were mistakes, but somehow managed to fit into the models I was to build.

This task took me nearly all of new years eve to complete. But after a total of 10 hours spread across two nights, I got it completed and my kit, along with 99 more will be used for the two large tournaments we will be hosting this year.

But that's not really why I started to write this. 2008 sucked for us. There were so many problems this past year and so many unexpected expenses (nearly $15,000) that were unplanned, that I was ready for the year to end and for the slate to be cleaned. It is a ritual I do every year. My wife has not yet gotten on board with it, but she soon will, I'm sure. Even though only a few days have passed, whatever happened last week, was last year, and I don't need to worry about that. Time to move on.

While I still have to pay for some of our unexpected expenses this coming year, I know that the problem that precipitated the cost has been solved. Any emotional baggage I have lingering from last year has been checked at the door of 2009. I begin this year, like I've begun all others; with hope, with relief, and with a yearning to see what comes next. 2009 will be interesting because of a job situation, and with the young lad starting some sort of pre-school program. The good news is that most anything that can break in the house already has been replaced. Then again, the last time I said that, the water heater started leaking...and that was just earlier this week! One last kick in the knee from 2008.

Oh well...we persevere. We learn to accept the trials as a lesson rather than a hurdle. We learn that as patient as we think we are, there are still things that can push our buttons, and we learn that we need to get those buttons out of sight so they are more difficult to reach. Each year I have a motto. in 2007, it was "It's Time". In 2008, it was non-existent. Maybe that's why it was so tough for us...no goals. This year, the motto will be patience. All of us in our house have fuses that seem to be cut shorter than average. Or maybe we just know where all the buttons have been hidden. This year, my resolution is to not let my buttons be pushed, while at the same time trying to avoid the buttons of others.

Here's to you doing the same! Whatever happened before Thursday was last year....so let it go already.