Days into a new year, I’ve yet to speak, write, or determine resolution. Maybe change isn’t always what it’s sold to be, especially when it is for no reason or purpose beyond change itself.
I am a few years in to a new computer, which I guess means it is no longer new, but it remains new to me much like our 2019 Expedition and our 2009 Toyota Sienna bought used, with cash, when our twins were babies and I was just returned from deployment from land with hazard pay and no place to spend a dime.
I hold to what I like and know, and I have little interest in new and change if I see no purpose beyond claiming of the labels.
Since owning, without my instruction, intercession, or approval—it’s changed. For years, when I opened new file to write, it had a common setting: Calibri font, size 11, 1.08 spacing, added space/line at end of paragraph. Immediately on open, I would change the font (Cambria is the font I choose to write in, if anyone else is a font-prude and specific too) and remove the added space/line at the end of paragraphs.
Then, one day without warning or prompt, it changed itself: Calibri, size 12 font, 1.16 spacing (who makes such strangely specific—decimal, factor of eight—spacing decisions), and remain of the space/extra line after paragraph’s end. It bugs my mind, even if there is no reason to.
Now, when I write, it’s an extra change. In addition to font, remove of the paragraph space, I reduce the font back to 11—where it is that my mind’s conditioned. Size 12, to me, is to large on the page as I’ve been conditioned to perceive in years of writing in size eleven. That said, the difference in 0.08 added spacing between lines—while I perceived the change at first—is something my perception has absorbed.
Did font size and spacing make the program any better?
No.
A software engineer, like all of us, needed to make a living; and so a program auto-update was created and one morning—to any computer linked to the world-wide web—the program default was changed.
I didn’t seek the change. I didn’t ask for it. Stuck in my ways—old—I change it back; every file, every program open, because it’s how I like to write.
Back to the new year, back to resolutions: will I make any hard ones—I have a few days yet to decide (361 I believe).
What do I want to do this year?
I want to keep at what I enjoy, invest time and energy into where I sense and discern value (to myself and others). I want to keep writing—though maybe write less and focus more, create something larger and more connected than what scribbles, or types, in a moment. I want to continue practice in my Faith, live it so that I do not seem a pontificate of words but one who, if I am to move anyone into curiosity of its practice, will inspire by action and example and the state and outward expression of my living soul in invitation and not judgment knowing I am an instrument of God and not His voice or judge.
I want to be present for my family. Our twins, like the Sienna, are aging. We have only a few more years before they begin and go out into lives of their own—I want to live and embrace the most of our time and moments that remain. I know, sooner than it seems, they will be gone.
What would I change, for more than change’s sake? For Christmas, we got a new weight rack. For a few years, we’d had an old bench I received when I was in middle school for Christmas or birthday gift as well. It worked well for that age, but we have son that’s grown out of our medium height range, and if he’s to do any squats or leg lifts, he grew out of the questionable height and stability limits of the bench and rack we used from then.
Hiding from my youngest son in a Dick’s Sporting Goods as he was armed in a boxing gloved left-hand looking for someone (me) to punch, I came upon a weight rack that caught my eye. It was NICE. After, I looked at others, but when you want something, you want it right and as good as it can be, not a lower substitute; and now we have the NICE one.
If there’s anything, right now, I intend to change it is to return again to lifting. 41—I don’t run miles as I used to. We have a high school freshman who wants to be the best pitcher and baseball player he can be—he needs strength in his legs and core to get there. We have a high school freshman volleyball player that as a middle and hitter is training to jump out of the gym—she needs strength in her legs and core to get there. I am a forty-one year old dad not wanting to slip completely into complacency and softness—I need strength in legs and core to get there. We have a ten-year old son who’d do anything I see—maybe I’ll inspire, and it will be there for him too.
I want to get back to legs and core—squats, hang cleans, and the other kind of lifts that build and strengthen whole-body and not just upper appearances.
So, in writing—working through my thoughts—this will be my resolution: to strengthen myself, to work with my kids and help them do the same for reasons and goals that are their own—change for more than change’s sake.
Of the rest, I’ll keep reading, writing—changing font, size, and remove of paragraph space—the way I like; not changing because an external pressured that I should for no other reason than “because.”