Tag: christmas

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Personal Update

Christmas Card 2023

This photo represents objective reality and has by no means been altered from its original appearance. /s

Dear Auna and Ben,

I don’t know about you guys, but the older I get, the more elusive the Christmas spirit becomes. As a kid, it was always automatic; Christmas morning was the most exciting day of the year by default. Now I have to work for it. I put in my best effort this year, though. Sure, there was rain instead of snow, but there were also Christmas lights in downtown Provo, Christmas concerts and choirs, Bible readings, gingerbread houses, parties with friends new and old, gift deliveries to neighbors, and cozy hours with family. A picturesque holiday, all things considered. Young adulthood is weird.

Okay, but have you seen the movie Klaus? I recognize that I’m four years behind the times on this one. My friends were all saying “This is the best Christmas movie ever made,” and they finally sat me down to watch it. And you know what? It is the best Christmas movie ever made.

2023 felt like four years packed into one. Maybe I need to start counting the seasons instead of the years. I can hardly even remember this January. Spotify tells me I was listening to lots of The Killers and The Airborne Toxic Event at the start of the year, so that’s the main thing, I guess. I took plenty of linguistics classes during the winter semester, survived some drama with an ex-girlfriend and the Celtic folk band, and went through all-around character development. Emotionally, I’m definitely in a better place than last year.

The big flashy highlight of the year was my summer travel to Tonga and then to France. I’ve done summer school every year since I started school, so I finally gave myself a break. Tonga was for some ethnographic research with anthropological researchers from the University of Utah (I wrote a little about it in this essay), and France was to play at some folk music festivals in the southeast (you can read about my nap in Charles de Gaulle here). It reminded me of how much I love traveling. So if I vanish next year, just assume I’ll turn up as an Irish sheepherder sometime in 2030.

What else did I accomplish this year? I asked out a really cute Walmart cashier (!) and we went on a date (!!). I found two new favorite books from opposite sides of the genre spectrum: Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli and the Wolf Hall series by Hilary Mantel. My Japanese got good enough that I can finally read simple texts (and more importantly, play Fire Emblem: Three Houses in Japanese). I bought jewelry and subscribed to journalism for the first time. My old crush told me that I’m fun at concerts. I got a lot better at singing! I took a creative writing class and got a lot better at that too, and I started writing a novel (!!!) that I promise I’m actually going to finish. No, seriously. Hold me to it.

I’m serious about watching Klaus. It’s a fantastic movie. Let me know your recommendations, too. I’m always in the market for good movies and music.

Love you guys. Keep in touch,

Eric

Categories
Personal Update

Beyond My Wildest Dreams

Merry Christmas everyone! The last week or two have been quite relaxed. I’m grateful I could finally slow down and take a break, reflect, and spend time with family.

Frankly, I’ve been a lot busier in the nights than in my waking moments. I think the saying “beyond my wildest dreams” is a bit of a misnomer—the things I hope for are really quite different from what I actually dream about. Honestly, I don’t know where some of that stuff comes from. Among other things, I rebuilt a house that had been turned upside down piece by piece, failed the biology class I had registered for and then forgotten about, and (particularly jarringly) kissed and got violently karate’d by the same girl on almost consecutive nights.

The other night I was sitting in a church service, and when it was time for the musical number, the musicians got up on the rostrum and started playing “I Melt With You” by Modern English (which, for the record, sounded exactly the same as the album version.) I looked around at the other members of the congregation to see if anyone was going to say anything, but everyone just sat on their pews and listened as if it were completely normal, so I did the same, and started enjoying it. Then an older woman in front of me turned around and said that this kind of music was very inappropriate for a church meeting. I didn’t want to offend the musicians, but I also didn’t want to offend her, so I just sat there uncomfortably until I woke up.

Another night, I waited after class to talk to my Japanese professor because he hadn’t understood something about English stress patterns. (In real life, this man is far more qualified than I am.) I explained that English typically used right-originating trochaic stress (I’m not sure if that’s actually true), and he said, “But what about three-syllable words that have stress on the first syllable?” and I thought about it and replied, “Those must be the words that are descended from Native American languages.” Obviously. That class had been at 9:00 AM for some reason, and I had to go to English Teaching at 10:00, but on the way there, I ran into a teacher who asked me why I was taking syntax from the other professor (this was actually my high school biology teacher), and I came up with an excuse that I had to scan the textbook—which I then had to do, so I was even more late for my 10 AM. I woke up before getting there.

I present these examples as a non-exhaustive case against the use of dreams as a metaphor for one’s deepest wishes and goals. There are many things that I long for with every breath of my soul—but reorienting an entire kitchen only to be used for martial arts practice in return is not one of them. ∎

Image: One of Albrecht Dürer’s woodcuts from the “Apocalipsis cum figuris” series, illustrating a scene from the biblical book of Revelation.

Categories
Personal Update

Christmas Card 2021

Merry Christmas! This is my first year doing a Christmas card on my own, and since I now have this public place to put my writing, I figured I’d take advantage of modern technology and make it so anyone who wants to read this can have it. (Who knows, maybe one day we’ll all be mailing QR codes on nice paper every December.)

I’m deeply grateful for the year 2021. It’s been the most difficult twelve months of my life, but a lot of good has come out of it. The positive side is often the one to be forgotten when the going gets tough, so in this letter, I’d like to reflect simply on the many gifts that this year has given me.

I’m grateful for the gift of music. Before this year, I knew that I enjoyed it. Now I know how much I need it. Nothing does as much good when times are hard. Musicians can speak to each other with a language no one else can fully understand. This year, I started taking the guitar seriously and discovered new ways of expressing myself. I met a great group of bandmates and have had so many new experiences, it’s hard to imagine myself without them.

I’m grateful for opportunities to learn. Some days I’m still blown away to wake up and have my most important job be to learn as much as possible in my field (I’m studying linguistics right now). I’m also grateful for all the beautiful things I discover the more places I look. I can attest to what Uncle Iroh once said: “It is important to draw wisdom from many different places. If you take it from only one place, it become rigid and stale.”

I’m grateful for good friends. No matter where I go, I never fail to find great, compassionate, and interesting people. Even people who are so different from me have become close friends once we’ve let each other in.

I’m grateful for memories that remind me of everything there is to hope for in life. The longer I live, the more hours, days, and years I convert from “might do” to “did do,” and I’ll never forget the people who made the “did do” into something more beautiful than I ever imagined in the “might do.”

I’m grateful for this beautiful world. Nature will always be unparalleled in its majesty, and I’m lucky to live under the beautiful Wasatch Mountains. The landscape has just been completely transformed by snowfall; everything is fresh and white, and the air tastes like Christmas. God’s creations have a unique power to help one regain one’s bearings amid the twists and turns of human society.

This year, I’ve discovered some great artists (Parachute is exactly my vibe), and my album of the year would have to be “The Struggle” by Tenth Avenue North. The album’s lyrics address the problem of evil from different angles–essentially, how can life be so bad if God is good, and why do evildoers often prosper while the humble suffer? The central theme is an affirmation that the struggle is not an accident, but a necessary and unavoidable part of life. I’ve felt that this year, and I know that my life has been made more beautiful because of the struggle.

So Merry Christmas everyone! I can’t wait to see what this next year has to offer.

Eric ∎