there’s no need to be afraid

Holiday stress got you down? Feel like the holidays suck bourbon balls and you can’t wait for January? Your old pal Uncle Willie is here to make it all better:

The economy is in the shitter, unemployment is skyrocketing, and it turns out that there are just nine days left until Christmas, which means there are only eight shopping days, provided you’re willing to run through the mall with Governor Ahnold and all the other panicked people on Christmas Eve. It is entirely understandable if you just want the whole damn season to be over. If you haven’t totally lost the holiday spirit (or dumped it all in your egg nog), I’m here today with a few tricks to make the holidays not just bearable, but joyous and wonderful.

I was trying to work in a Brad Jacobs reference there, but I couldn’t make it fit, damn my stupid fingers. Anyway, this column is filled with what I hope is useful advice to actually relax and enjoy the season, and it ends with this bit that is so important to me, I’m going to excerpt it here to give it maximum exposure:

Before I settle down for a long winter’s nap, I want to mention one thing specifically for the parents reading this. Go to your kids’ holiday pageants, and cherish every moment when you’re there. Take the morning off from work, call in sick, but do whatever it takes to attend. Arrive early, so you’re not fighting with other parents for a spot against the back wall. Turn off your cell phone (and don’t just put it on vibrate so you can check your e-mail during the Hanukkah song — off means OFF). Embrace the time you’re there. You only get a few of these moments, and one day you’ll look at December on the calendar and realize that, like a set of keys dropped into a river of molten lava, they’re gone, man.

See, there’s nothing tricky about it. It’s just a little trick!

wilde is on mine

Rogers has some guest bloggers taking up temporary residence at Kung Fu Monkey, including Michael Alan Nelson, writer of the sensational Boom book Fall of Cthluhu, who managed to post the first truly satisfactory (to me) answer to the obligatory question, where do writers get their ideas?

I’ve come to learn over the past few years what most writers probably
already instinctively know; much of writing is about observation. Ideas
usually don’t come to us in a vacuum. However, writing can be a very
solitary existence so it’s very important to get out of the house,
interact with people, see and experience new things. You have a much
better chance of generating ideas when you aren’t staring at the same
four walls day after day.

When I get stuck on anything, I go for a walk. When I get really stuck, I go for a drive, and then take a walk when I get to wherever I end up. I may not come home with lots of ideas, but I always come home with at least one. I also never know when something’s going to strike me, which is why I always carry a little notebook and pen in my pocket when I leave the house.

Man, I want to write a Cthulhu story now. Time to take a walk.

… well, probably a drive. Yeah, a long, long drive.

my roof is leaking; life is good

Stormpocalypse followed me home from Seattle, and I fell asleep – and woke up several times last night – to the sound of rain pouring down on my house.

I’ve been waiting for the weather to get cold and rainy, so I can finally put down my rye grass seed, so I was thrilled at the prospect of a few inches of rain today and tomorrow . . . until I got up this morning and discovered that our roof has a serious leak. This is never good news, but we just spent our entire home improvement budget repairing the damage from past storms, and fundamentally altering the part of our house that we thought was responsible for it.

It turns out that there’s a different leak, somewhere else on the roof, and not only do we have no idea where it is, it’s going to put a lot of stress on our already-stressed monthly budget to find and repair it.

As you can imagine, I was very unhappy when I saw water pouring down my living room wall this morning, but we made a call to the roof guy, and he told Anne that there’s nothing we can do until it dries up.

After talking to him she told me, “He’ll come out tomorrow, but as far as today goes, freaking out about it won’t accomplish anything.”

I was already on my way to a serious category five freakout, but she was right. I needed to figure out a way to pull out of the spiral of anger and frustration, especially since I’m writing a column today on how you can deal with holiday stress and actually enjoy the season. I commented on Twitter that I was enjoying the cognitive dissonance.

I don’t like wallowing in pity or other negative emotions, so I gave myself a task for the day: focus only on the things that make me happy. I picked out the very first thing that came to mind: Sleigh Ride was playing on Soma’s Christmas Lounge. Ever since I was a little kid, that was the song for Christmas. It’s so upbeat and evokes such wonderful images of happiness and joy, it never fails to put a smile on my face.

Project Procrastinate Under Deadline required me to share this moment with Twitter, and in so doing, I remembered something someone said to me many, many years ago. I forget the precise wording, but the suggestion was to take a moment every day to identify three different things that I was happy or grateful for. The exercise is awesome, because the first thing is always very easy to list, but it’s a challenge to just pick two more things.

I can only speak for myself, but in the process of identifying just three things I’m happy about, I always find a lot more, and no matter how upsetting or annoying the bad things are, they are vastly outweighed by the good. It’s easy to lose perspective when your roof is leaking (but at least you’ve got a roof, right?) or when your boss is bitching you out about putting new covers on the TPS reports (at least you’ve got a job, right?) or when a continent or an ocean separates you from the person you love most in the world (I don’t have to put a parenthetical on this one, right?) But it’s just as easy to spend a minute picking out things that make you happy as it is to focus on the things that suck. It’s empowering, too, because when you focus on the good things, you make a successful save vs. everything else in the world and get +5 to all other saves for the rest of the day.

Here are the three things I picked out this morning:

1.) I’m healthy and in good shape. 2.) I have a family that truly loves each other. 3.) I have a series of very good jobs.

About a hundred people have replied to me on Twitter, sharing three things that make them happy. I’m going to assume that many of you reading this are dealing with some degree of holiday stress; why not take a minute – just sixty seconds out of the day – and reflect on three things that make you happy? Whether you’re having a great day or a lousy one, I promise you’ll feel better when you’re done.

on the fourth day of geekmas, uncle willie gave to me . . .

. . . a chance to win an autographed Happiest Days of Our Lives at Geekdad:

This 4th Day of Geekmas is extra special, as it boasts a prize from a member of the GeekDad extended family. Oh yes, kids, it’s a present from your Uncle Willie!

Actor, writer, father, uber-nerd, and GeekDad reader Wil Wheaton is, for lack of a better term, our Champion. From Gordie LaChance to Wesley Crusher to his keynote at PAX 2007 to his epic appearance on MC Frontalot’s new album Final Boss, Wil has become a veritable cultural touchstone for nerds of all stripes. Wil is one of us, and he was kind enough to toss a signed copy of his latest book The Happiest Days of Our Lives into the pot for 12DOG.

Should you wish to procure this literary jewel, simply leave a response to this post by midnight tonight, and a lucky winner will be chosen at random. (Don’t forget to include your email address in the relevant field!)

It’s a geekmas miracle, kids.

Note: You have to go to Geekdad and leave a comment there to be entered. You’re welcome to comment here, but it won’t be a contest entry unless it’s at Geekdad.