First World Problems Suck, Too! Back to Basics
This is my last post of 2013. I am almost always an optimist. Don’t get me wrong, some great things have happened in the last year, but overall…let me be the first to say — See ya’ 2013. Thanks for nothing! Don’t let the door hit ya in the @$$! Ever have a year that you’re just glad is over? If it could go wrong it did. It was funny for awhile, then not so much. The hits-just-kept-on- coming kind of year.
Let me tell you, it’s hard on a family when a few of those kinds of years line themselves up right in a row. It’s tempting feel sorry for yourself or start the ever dangerous comparison game that is oh so much easier thanks to social media and certain friends constantly posting from their third trip to Hawaii or Greece or Disney! Comparison only leads to the dreaded question…why? Why me? Where have I gone wrong? Why another crummy year? I don’t know. Sorry, no answers in this post, only commentary.
It only makes things worse when you get on Twitter and find out that all your problems are only First World Problems. Which is code for, Quit Complaining,Yankee! Nothing like piling on some guilt to go with a crappy year! How American to complain about a stress-ridden, unstable, overworked, health-waning, uncertain, money draining, nerve-wracking, dream-crushing, crying-out-for-help, doing-the-best-you-can-but-its-not-even-close-to-enough kind of year while living in a house with indoor plumbing and instant heat! How dare you!? American pig! You have no right to complain, you puss. Grab a boot strap or something…go feed the poor in a shelter or take a mission trip you ingrate!
I’m here to say that the average American is drowning. Lives of quiet desperation are rampant. The weight on our shoulders and stress on our four chambered hearts is enough to make pigs glow in the dark. Well, apparently some Chinese scientists did that for real. I don’t know why, and I don’t particularly care. I grew up on a pig farm, and it won’t matter if a hog is black, white, spotted, or glowing…I’d like to see those Chinese scientists try to load a market weight feeder into a trailer. Now that’s good American farm boy fun right there, but I digress.
I would like to say publicly, first world problems are still problems. They still produce angry, desperate, tired, broken-hearted, frustrated, medicated, addicted people. Maybe the stress of paying for a child’s braces or keeping your fancy American house out of foreclosure during a non-recession doesn’t rise to the obvious need of people in third world countries living under tarps and duct tape with their children starving at their feet. I get that. I’m just saying for 2014 I want off the roller-coaster. Stop the frenetic madness!
My wife and I have said it before. We even put the word SIMPLIFY in big letters up in our house a few years ago. It didn’t work. If anything the world’s gotten faster. Well this it. 2014 you’re the year we’re gonna do it. This year come hell or rising sea levels, I’m going back to basics. Back to worthless, green, American cash in my pocket, debit card, be damned. Back to taking my kids hiking and leaving all of our fancy wifi-connected phones in the glove box of the truck. No, I’m not going to take it along just for the camera or clock, because it will beep or buzz and as I’ve said I’ve had enough. If we run across Sasquatch out there we will not get a picture of him. He will live in our memories forever.
Sidenote-I do not consider being unarmed part of unplugging. Just because I want to breathe again doesn’t mean I want to be helpless. I might go old-school though and carry my revolver hiking! You didn’t think I could go an entire post and not mention my second amendment right to the safety provided by weapons, did you? No.
To conclude, 2013 might be one for the rear view mirror, with the great unknown of a new year before us. A new year used to only mean “hope” for great things to come, now I’m a little tainted. I’m old enough to know that all the motivational sayings in the world might not make 2014 awesome, but I’m going to do my best to enjoy the basics. Mostly for me, that means time well spent with the most important ones in my life, because they are growing faster than our world spins. Time is precious.
A little less screen-time replaced with more time out where green things grow wild out of the black dirt. Time spent talking about Hobbits or why the Chinese created a glowing pig while sitting around burning wood is the order of the day in 2014. We will search out places where water trickles and wind rustles the leaves. I will not despise the great moments found at the kitchen table as mundane as helping with homework or eating together at a table. I pray for the year to come and that the truly important things be forcibly placed on the top of the list. I don’t care if you call it a first world problem. My family and I live in a first world country, and believe me our world has become a problem, going back to the basics is a good start to setting some of it right.
Unplug the Kindle – Read a paper book today. Order my latest novel, Mercy Shot, today at www.scsherman.com and you’ll get a signed copy! Molon Labe.
“Mercy Shot is a riveting, modern tale of the twisted and insidious war that’s being waged against our Second Amendment rights. S.C. Sherman does a great job of forecasting in this timely tome of how things could possibly go down. My advice is to a.)Read this book and b.) Buy a stack of guns and ammo, pretty damn quick. Molon Labe.” –Doug Giles, CEO of ClashDaily.com
Author, S.C. Sherman is available for speaking events and members of the media feel free to contact him for interviews. If you are interested in bulk purchasing or resale of Mercy Shot, please contact S.C. Sherman via email steve@scsherman.com. Also, go LIKE www.facebook.com/mercyshot to stay up to date on all things Mercy Shot.
Image: Courtesy of: http://www.jeremymorgan.com/funny/funny-memes/99-problems-but-a-meme-aint-one/attachment/7-9-funny-meme-39/