NOTHING SAYS CHRISTMAS LIKE...HARMONICAS.

There is nothing that symbolizes the holiday season like playing harmonica in the rain with siblings and cousins.

Unless you have a kazoo or tuba. Those are the only two things that could possibly be better.

NOTHING SAYS CHRISTMAS LIKE...A BURRITO.

Maybe all along we should have been leaving Santa a couple enchiladas instead of another stupid plate of sugar cookies with no nutritional value.

IT'S THE _____ TIME OF THE YEAR.

I've been thinking a lot about the experience of Christmas.

I've always loved it. December, the holiday season, lights, swirling people, the feeling of joy and humanity mingling amidst once-a-year melodies and buttered-up treats everywhere.

I still love it. Or I will again. But this has been a tough year. A very challenging one in multiple ways. 

I have not had the same experience this season. I've tried. And had many good moments and made some good memories. 

I've loved the people I've been with. Drank some good coffee. A lot. Eaten some sugar. Listened to Pentatonix. Tchaikovsky, and Sufjan Stevens incessantly. Every time I try to play something else - say, Cat Power, then I hear "...but Daddy, it's Christmas season, can we PLEASE just listen to Christmas music!" I acquiesce the majority of the time on that one. It's a battle where I'm the perpetual villain.

It's also been a tough season. This post isn't about the reasons that it's been tough. It's about the feeling I've had this season that's different. Right now, it's the present. But someday it will be a memory. 

Someday it will be a memory. 

I love the fragility of memory and how it lets us move on with life and leave things behind; often times things that should be left behind out of survival or necessity or in order to prioritize new focuses and opportunities. 

But some things need to be remembered, and remembered not just as concrete experiences (what, when, who, where, etc.), but as emotional passages. My heart has gone through some deep tunnels and twisty turns this year and I'm having a difficult time finding the familiar joy I've always felt this time of year. 

I don't think it's a bad thing to try and hang on to the feeling. Not to drag it out or make it more acute, but to make sure I remember. Because some things don't make sense until you experience them. And I feel like I'm having an experience; a passage of something that will pass, but that I should remember. 

I'm sad. At the happiest time of the year. 

The logical part of my brain - and I am very logical in certain ways when it comes to finding clarity - knows that there are many joyful experiences and wonderful times ahead and some of the feelings I have now will dissipate; compost away into the heap of forgotten months that shape you without consciously realizing. I have so many people I care about, so many good things going on, so much to practice gratitude for. I am grateful for these things. Most of all the people; the many people I am surrounded with who bring support and joy in so many ways. 

This is a hard month this time around. Maybe there will be other Decembers like this in my future; I'm guessing the classic ones I'm used to will likely outweigh these. 

But I don't want to forget how tough this has been. I think I need to remember. 

Because I want to understand better, going forward, the people who experience this every year. Every December, every holiday season. The sadness.

The sadness and even loneliness amidst being surrounded by joy and love. Even when you're in the middle of that and it's directed at you. You can still have those feelings; if I deal with some of these things with the support system I have, then I don't know how so many people deal when they're truly alone and have everything crumbling around.

I don't know, and I want to keep a little piece of that feeling with me; a slice of this month's experience to keep handy and accessible for the coming years when I'm feeling jollygood and it's almost impossible to understand how anyone could not be feeling the holiday spirit. 

So yeah, I wanna remember. Ideally the right amount. It's hard hanging on to hope sometimes, or trying to find it or resurrect it, but it's still important to keep alive, and maybe, maybe 

I will be there in a future December to be there for someone who understands. Even if it's just a little bit. Who understands how hard joy and jolly can be sometimes. 

In a left turn here, I subscribe to the dual and perhaps dueling ideas that 1) you can and should own up to your feelings and emotions honestly and 2) you can also push yourself to own up to them, and then to continue moving on and sometimes, sometimes, sometimes, even (platitude coming up)...

...fake it til you make it. There is something to that. 

The idea of trying to bring your best, of trying to model for others, especially children, of how you can respond in the face of adversity or things not going your way, and creating joy and joyful experiences, EVEN WHEN YOU DON'T FEEL LIKE IT, and realizing at some point, sometimes, you get sucked into it and it turns real. 

Lot of good moments this season. Lot to remember.

Joyeux Noel, all. Love you. Especially my wife, the delectable and patient Countess Becca who brings joy to so many surrounding her. 

Including me. 

SOME DAYS THE DREAM DEAD, OR HIBERNATING.

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Sometimes Mozart, sometimes Phosphorescent. Sometimes alone, sometimes not. Sometimes strong, sometimes fragile. - - - @phosphorescentmusic #44dads #44music #selfportrait #josephivanlong #solitude There is joy and there is sadness, they are both parts of a whole life to own up to, to acknowledge. And to feel. December the beautiful; the warmest, the coldest month.

A post shared by Joseph Long (@josephivanlong) on Dec 6, 2018 at 6:50pm PST

Some day, some days, the day is heavy,
and the days surrounding that day,

and you pick up a foot, and the other, and move forward, or somewhere,
and try to recall an inspirational meme that reminds you to be grateful for having two feet.

Some days,
the path ahead is paved with a giant screen illuminating the successful dreams you've been a part of helping build for others,

dream-making,

and you don't see your own pixels on that screen,

and the tired,
the discouragement, the dark
overwhelms

the light,

and the memory of having fought hard,
and you're tired of fighting and just have enough left
to keep going and moving a foot, and then another,

and hope that it will be enough
to keep someone else's dreams alive,

for the next day.

NOTHING SAYS CHRISTMAS LIKE...A SELF-PORTRAIT AFTER FEEDING GOATS.