I'm THAT Jorge...

I write long blog entries. Get over it.

The holiday is only a week away and every now and then, I feel a twinge of the Christmas spirit. It is always a fleeting feeling.

I don’t know if it is somehow related to my upbringing or if something else is to blame, but I have never been inclined to anticipate major dates on the calendar. It is a constant struggle for me to “look forward to” events like my birthday, Thanksgiving and Christmas. If there is any calendar event that genuinely excites me, it is probably New Year’s. But even that has lost its luster for me this year. This is not for a lack of trying, mind you. Internally, I always know that I am just weird if I don’t demonstrate enthusiasm for certain holidays. So I tell myself to figure out why I care about the upcoming events.

If it’s my birthday, I try to determine how it benefits my life. I could finally drink when I turned 21! I didn’t. I was too godly for that. But at least I finally had the legal option. 25 was my golden birthday and the supposed required age for me to see a dramatic drop in my insurance rates. I was looking forward to that, but those rates didn’t actually drop because by then, I was married to a woman with a couple of accidents and tickets on her driving record. At least, that was what my insurance provider told me. And I suppose I can look forward to 30 because…..well, I won’t be in my 20s anymore?

I suppose the holidays are good for spending time with family, but I’m not yet at a place in my life where I don’t see my immediate family often enough to value spending time with them on one particular day. And sure, I like seeing my grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. I really do love it. But it’s not enough to make me count down until Christmas comes.

Tara thinks there is some correlation between my indifference for holidays and the fact that I didn’t usually get great gifts growing up. This isn’t a shot at my parents, mind you. I personally think they did an incredible job for birthdays and Christmas presents in my formative years, when finances were particularly thin. I was never unsatisfied. I had a Christmas with all Dallas Cowboys themed presents that I loved. I remember the Christmas with my first bike. My 16th birthday brought my first REAL camera. But it’s true. My friends were always getting more gifts than I was and they usually got things that they had actually asked for. I wasn’t really allowed to ask for specific gifts. The one time I remember my grandfather having my sister and I write out a Christmas list for Santa, my parents made us throw them away and scolded my grandfather for it. So while I got plenty of gifts I LOVED, I almost never got the thing I really wanted.

Funnily, now that I’m married to a woman who asks me for a Christmas list and whose family does the same, I’ve discovered that most of the things I REALLY want these days are far too expensive to ask for. So the outcome is still the same. Lots of things I love, still missing the things I want most. But at least I’ll be getting some good clothes and a Roku box. :-)

Since everyone that is giving me presents has, in all likelihood, already bought them, I figured I would go ahead and publish my Christmas list. Santa, if you would please send some of these things my way SOMETIME in the next 6 months, I would be very grateful.

1. A tablet computer - Right now, my heart is set on the Samsung Galaxy Tab with Android. But in the next month, there will be tons of great Android tablets, many with better hardware and more current software, so the particular tablet is really inconsequential to me. I would even be overjoyed with an iPad.
2. The Nexus S - Nobody else that reads my blog knows enough about the Android OS to care about why I want this phone when a more powerful one will probably be out in 2011. The short answer is this one will be pure Google experience Android. So it wins for me.
3. A new car - Married life with one vehicle is ridonculously hard. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it played a part in many people’s decision to get a divorce.
4. A PS3/Wii/XBox - Which console matters none to me, in the end. I just want one.
5. The clothes - I want more coats, more shoes, more shirts and more than two pairs of jeans.
6. The books - American Jesus, Moneyball, On Stories, etc.

And of course, there is all the stuff that money can’t necessarily buy. Health, for me and all my loved ones. Of course, money plays into that, too. I want to be able to afford to ALWAYS eat healthy. I can get a few healthy meals, but it is costly to make it a permanent venture. I want no back pain. Most people don’t know the extent of my pain because most of the time, I can push past it. But the truth is, chronic pain in my back has been affecting me for 15 years and it only gets worse over time. Sometimes, I am afraid that I won’t be walking by the time I’m 40 if something doesn’t change.

I also want to be sure of my faith. After four years away from the church and from God, I was able to find something to hold onto to bring me back. A desperate yearning for God to be real gave me traction to walk confidently back into faith, but I feel like hope can only get me so far. How long will it carry enough weight to keep my very real skepticism from resurfacing? I don’t know.

Lastly, I want somebody to tell me why I shouldn’t feel guilty for writing such a damned selfish “I want, I want, I want” blog entry.