J.P.

While reviewing my goals and associated personal accomplishments in 2023 I decided that last year was pretty much too “scattered” in my ways. It was a decent year and I feel like I generally moved forward in my humanness, but I didn’t immerse myself in activities that I thoroughly enjoy. I did some great things and I was able to “escape” into my hobbies on several occasions; I just didn’t feel enveloped in the joy I usually feel when pursuing my hobbies.

So, in 2024, I have decided to focus on my top three pastimes: aviation, weather and space, and retro computing. Things I’m not nearly as focused on this year include the other tech pursuits, including everything going on at Apple, or the latest in the world of Linux. These latter two subjects are covered sufficiently in my professional life and I don’t need to try to have fun messing around with Linux or buy the latest Apple gadget to escape into my hobbies.

I’ve had storm chasing on the mind a lot, and I’m anxious to see what El Niño brings to Mother Nature’s mood in the upcoming storm chasing season. While I had some great flights in 2023, I did not fly nearly enough, and that can be rectified fairly easily now that I’m a member of a local flying club. As far as retro computing goes, I don’t think my husband will let me purchasing an early 1980s NCR minicomputer with four attached cash registers to the system, but I do enjoy reading about these things and how they worked through various reference sources online.

Quality over quantity is the name of the game as I try to have a more focused, intentional life here in 2024.

When I was a kid I enjoyed reading anything I could get my hands on. My mom came into the kitchen on more than one occasion finding me parked in front of a bowl of Super Sugar Smacks reading our phone book.

The telephone directory pictured above is not from our small town but it looks identical to the CONTEL phone book we had of the same year. When my paternal side of the family decided to sell the business, we had a collection of every phone book for the area from 1969 to 2010.

I’m digressing.

I would often be reading the phone book because I didn’t have anything else at hand to read at the moment. I gleaned a lot of information from the phone book, because after all, the phone book holds a lot of information, and I started memorizing phone numbers without even realizing it. For example, today I can still recite the phone number for the main office of my alma mater and for my elementary school, though I have no reason whatsoever to call these people and I have probably never called these numbers in my life. They were just there in the phone book.

Like many geeks I have tried to move from reading books to using their electronic equivalents, namely, the Kindle app from Amazon or Apple Books. I usually try to read using these apps on one of the iPads I’ve had over the years. And with the turning of the clocks to the New Year I have come to one solid realization.

I hate electronic books.

I don’t feel connected to what I’m reading. I don’t like having my eyes lit up in a darkened room by the words on the “page” and I feel like I’m actually just using a bunch of web pages.

Give me a real, printed book anyway.

Now, I’ve never had an Amazon Kindle with E-ink, which doesn’t rely on backlighting, so I don’t know if I would enjoy that reading experience. A couple of weeks ago my husband and I browsed around our local Bookmans, which is a delightful used book store with lots and lots of interesting things to read. I purchased a book on storm chasing that I’m currently reading and before going to sleep for the night it’s quite nice to not have an iPad staring me in the face as I’m starting to feel sleepy.

I’ve often quipped that the reason we have school violence is because students are no longer high on the fluid to make ditto copies. Perhaps we’re all getting cranky because we have too much blue light staring us in the face all the time.

I’m finding myself much happier settling down with a book before calling it a night. It’s a shame we don’t have a phone book in the house, just in case I have a literary emergency.

Like everyone, I suppose, I sometimes think what life would be like if we won the lottery. What would we do with all that money? I have visions of buying an airplane so I can fly the family all over the country and easily fly us back east to visit with the relatives, but after the novelty of that wore off, what would I do? I am easily bored. I like tinkering with things and I like being able to get things, but the things I want to get have been obtained through hard work, which helps sidestep the boredom.

At one time in my life I thought I wanted to be rich so we could hobnob with the country club set, have lavish dinners and expensive drinks, and garner the attention of everyone in the dining room when I loudly ordered a $500 bottle of champagne, “make it two”.

The truth of the matter is, I’m content with where we are on the socioeconomic scale, and we are quite fortunate with our position. Too many people don’t have a reliable roof over their head, way too many people are looking for food, and way too many people live paycheck to paycheck. Because of the smarts of my husband we’ve been able to build a good life for ourselves and provide a bit for those we care for.

That’s much more fulfilling than that expensive bottle of champagne.

On the back half of my life I’m still looking to be a better person, but I’m not searching to be a richer person, at least not in an economical way. Deep down I’m still the guy from rural Central New York that grew up in a small town that was on the wrong side of the interstate as far as his classmates were concerned and you know what?

That’s awesome.

I’ve known a few too many “trust fund babies” in my life. While it’s fun to be able to have what you want without doing much to earn it, where’s the value in that? More importantly, where’s the zest of life in that?

I need to stick to the awesome.