2023 Recap 2022. Can I Overcome?

Maybe WE shall overcome.  It is easier to do it together.  But the question is whether I shall overcome by myself for 2023.  In thnking about three problems that were mentioned a lot in 2022, I think I will be lucky on only one of them.  

Lets start out easy with number 1:Food. 

One of the problems I mentioned the most from 2022 is my repertoire of dinners.  In one post I calculate how many dinners I need to know how to make for a three and four week vacation.  I think I can overcome this problem, in other words, I think I can have enough new selections for my summer 2023 repertoire.  

A problem, I notice though, is that many of these potential new meals are thought of as finger food.  Kids meals.  Easy, but not so healthy meals.  Things kids like to eat when they are... well kids, but maybe dont have such great nutritional value for them.  Meals like pizza, hamburgers, submarines, even spaghetti are not high on the nutritional value ladder.  Which sometimes puzzles me. It seems like many Mexican and Italian foods are in this category.  Maybe a level up because it is home cooking from junk food, but again, not of great value.  

This makes me sad and frustrated as I thought I could add some more meals to my repertoire, but admittedly, they might be from this category.   I wanted to learn how to make homemade bread and then pizza is an easy step after that.  My Mother did that.  Then chili con carne, or tacos or enchiladas, but all of these would probably fall in the little better than junk food category.  

So, I think I can increase my repertoire, the question is if I can climb to a higher level of nutritional value in doing so.   ????? That is the real challenge.

The second problem: overcoming the generation gap. 

I was thinking about this more as I rode the train with my teenage daughter to our new years eve cottage location.   Teen agers spend endless time, if you let them, on their gadgets, doing in my opinion valueless stupid things.  Mostly looking at tik tok.  Sorry, but I just have an axe to grind against that app. I watch people looking at it and I cant see any worth in it.  Zero, nada.  People look at small films for 1 to 10 seconds. If a good one catches their eye they may watch it several times or to the end.  But most of the stuff on there is pure crap, and people slide through those films

easier than soft butter.  Ok, I dont get it even though there are hundreds of millions of people watching those videos.  I dont care to get it, I dont want to waste my precious time, even if it means choosing to look out a train window when it is dark outside.  Get it?   Zero value.  Anything else is better.

So stuff like this I cant get over my generation gap.  It wont happen.  It is not so much a generation gap as a technology gap.   Granted there were always these type of gaps in the generations.  From the invention and take off of TV in the 50s to stereo music rock n roll and then computers and now other technologies, I am sure parents have often felt the entertainment was just plain stupid and ... valueless compared to what they grew up with .  Who can argue with this?  Its probably true.  My Father wasnt a TV man because he didnt grow up with it himself.  He must have thought it was mind numbing, and in fact a lot of it is/was that I was watching.  So.... it is just the inherent moving forward of inventions that creates a ge neration    gap.   I experience it with my kids too. So what? Should I learn to love tik tok?  I probably wont, but no big deal really. Its a gap.These will always exist between parents and kids

3.  Getting back to actually being 40 percent daddy at home.   

As I said on a post back in August, I went from 100 percent daddy to 5 to 10 per cent daddy.  Although that was normal as my wife took my kids on vacation after I got back with them, it didnt get much better over the following months.  It was the backwash of the covid times.  During covid I was home A LOT and was doing a lot with/for my kids.  Now, I am in the store A LOT and it has balanced out the time I am not home with my kids with covid times.  

The question is if in the new year and the coming months I can recalibrate and swing the pendulum back a bit so I can be at 25-35 per cent with my kids during the week.  If I could have half the Saturdays off and every Tuesday off that would be great. That would be an improvement.   The thing is, I have to make a lot more money in my business to do that.  That is the crisis, sad truth, of having your own business.  You really have to put the time in your self.  If you are an employee of somebody, you have your hours, thats it.  But having your own small business... you are the one and only lonely who has to take care of everything.   Its possible I could get up to the 6 days (Sunday is always off, so 10 a month), but I cant predict now.  And... time is running out.  My daughters are getting older and bigger and soon when they are both teenagers, probably wont want me messing in on anything they do besides giving them money and buying them stuff and maybe taking them someplace.  Who knows.  But... time doesnt wait for anyone. Time does not stand still.   But sometimes I do.    

I hope, and I think 2023 will be much better than 2022.  Then again, that just might be the euforia of a new year speaking through me, and it will be more or less the same as 2022.  But I have to be optimistic, especially at the beginning of the new year.  

Much success to all, including me, for the coming year.  

Max 

Listening to sone old stuff while writing.  I have the whole fugazi collection. I want to get this Bob Dylan Cd.