Well, a birthday has come and gone and it will come as no surprise that I got older too! Since I’m now a bit older and wiser, it seemed fitting to write down a few things I like to do differently this year.

1. Get rid of the smart phone before it kills me

I’ve had a smartphone for years and it’s done me no good. Sure, I can watch a video on youtube while shirking my various duties or pretend like I have something to do while in a waiting room, but other than that it really doesn’t afford me much. “People use to live without them” goes without saying, but it’s true and worth repeating. I too can remember the old way of living and things were good.

Plus, I’ve been holding onto this current phone for so long the whole back has basically fallen off, the screen is cracked, you can’t charge without one of those charging pads, (which is certainly giving me cancer) and when it’s charging, it begins to get dangerously hot, leading my Mother-in-law to conclude that my phone will soon catch fire and burn down my house.

In order to avoid that horrible fate, I’m gonna have to trash it and bring my light phone. Yes, I failed once with the light phone, but that was before I was a parent and still believed my life was about some crude form of happiness and pleasure. With that out of the way, I think this second go around will go well, plus I’m poor now so once the smartphone’s gone, I’ll have no way to backtrack.

2. Keep some journals and use them.

I watched a video which I’ll link on here for you in case you’re interested, it’s about the three different types of journals common to medieval and renaissance Europe. Now while I don’t plan on keeping it exactly as he says, (because I know I won’t keep it up), I want to adopt something like this. Perhaps a pocket book and a few topic specific commonplace books. The pocket book as a catch all and the CPBs as the depots for the pocket book to filter into. We’ll see what I can actually hold myself to, but that’s the goal.

3. Delete all streaming services.

I hate them and they hate me. The library has movies and I have a projector set up in the basement just waiting for me to buy a DVD player. Also, youtube has so many good films to watch for free, why would I pay for netflix? Netflix just upped their price while continuing to pump out their low quality shows and films.

F*%k them! If I'm gonna watch a film then I want to do it with style, a DVD that I picked out in person, played on a projector. I'm done being a content piggle who slurps up whatever slop is put before me, I’m gonna die! I don’t have time for that anymore!

4. Stop starting more books, you ape!

Last year I made a book list as an attempt to cut off my habit of starting HUNDREDS OF BOOKS AND LEAVING THEIR ROTTING CORPSES LYING ABOUT MY HOUSE.

Starting a new book prematurely is like cheating on your wife in that it’s disgusting, it’s untempered and it sends you to hell! Okay, maybe it doesn’t send you to hell, but it could be a sign you’re on the road to hell.

Did St. Anthony of the desert have the habit of starting too many books? He probably didn’t have very many books to begin with but if he did, I would confidently guess he finished each one slowly and with full attention of his faculties. That’s how I would like to be but I’ll settle for just not starting a book until I’ve finished the last.

5. Play with my son every day.

I often don’t play with my son everyday. By the time I get home from my second job it’s so easy to brush the kid off and instead hop on substack to peruse the articles. Yet he's getting older and I'm dying quicker so I need to give him my full attention for at least an hour every evening. No podcast, no substack, nothing. Just shut up and play.

6. Pray with my wife

I love prayer books. I long to get my hands on the newest hottest breviary hitting the press. Yes, I have the Anglican office book, the Melkite publican prayer book and the Walsingham Ordinariate Breviary and I'm still a pathetic sinful oaf. Meanwhile, my saintly wife just prays her post-vatican 2 book of Chrsitian prayer faithfully everyday and seems to be radiating holiness.

And when I do deign to condensed from my self created pedestal down to where she and Jesus are to join in prayer, I mostly grumble interiorly the whole time about how boring the prayers are and how horrible the art is in Christian prayer (it is actually offensive to me how bad the art is).

I’m done with that, I’m just going to just pray with her and shut up inside. Psalms, readings, and hymns are all man actually needs in a prayer book, that’s more than enough to become a saint with.

7. Start riding a bike to work

If I leave at 6:30 am, I can easily make it to work by 7:30 even if I run into any problems. I’m not getting any younger and I drink too much beer to not get in a good spot of cardio every day. Now if you know me personally and are reading this, you may be thinking “Jake, you’ll get shot! That’s not a good neighborhood to ride through”, but I have considered this issue and find in it no reason for concern. While the neighborhood is a bit criminal, most criminals aren't up at 6:30. If they were, they would probably find honest work.

8. Learn to focus on at least one task a day

Learn to focus completely on whatever is the matter at hand. I’m such a scatterbrained freak. I’d probably enjoy everything more if I gave it my whole attention. I blame the smart phones for this in part since they give us the illusion of being gods who can attend to several matters all over the world at once while in truth, we’re just losers who don’t attend to the things right in front of us. Yet it’s not all the fault of smart phones, the real source of the problem is me.

The only way to get yourself to do anything that is difficult is to will it. Of course you need Christ, but Christ doesn’t force you to be virtuous, he requires your will to participate in his grace and mine likes to not do that.

Yet it’s not as easy as just saying “Oh, I want to be attentive now!”, you have to actually practice it and that’s always the part that ruins my plans, so I think it would be an attainable goal to try focusing intently on a single task each day, if that strikes you as too simple than you don’t understand how distracted I am. In fact, while I write this I'm also grading live presentations before me in my new testament class! I’m sick I tell you!

9. Be in silence more

I, like most of you fellow zoomers, hate silence. I prefer to keep a steady frequency of noise running at all times. Wake up, turn a podcast on. Get into the car, turn the radio on. Get to work, toss earbuds in and play more pods or music. Keep the anxious thoughts away by keeping the mind constantly gorged on content. This is a good strategy for living a miserable life which is why I would like to stop doing it.

From a few books and a handful of real experiences, I’ve become convinced that silence isn’t merely where God speaks to the us, rather, silence is God's voice communing with the soul. This intimacy is always available; eternally being poured out.

The process of accessing true silence requires multiple hours for the soul to become attuned to it, then you sense his presence is the very lack of sound or perhaps you sense it within you and the silence put you interiorly in a place to recognize that? I’m not really sure how it works, I just know it works.

Other thoughts

Play more guitar, fix broken stuff around the house, sing more, cook more, brew more mead, light candles and turn off the lights more, spend more time in the Garden and less time indoors, call my grandma more, read more, pray more, shut up more, stop being a slob and an oaf, don’t complain about anything, sleep-in less, get a dog, finish my fence and then buy chickens and a goat, train the dog to protect the chickens (I found an article on how), start composting again, install the new furnace downstairs, okay this is just becoming a to-do list, so I'll stop here.

Well that’s a good start for the year. Aim high, hit somewhere.