Busy day ahead. We are going to our friend’s Jen and Sean’s house for a “Full Family Game Day” which is a new thing we are doing this year, just as an attempt to get The Whole Fam together on a more regular basis.

But whom, you may be curious, is in this family?

I am so glad you asked.

First, I am not related genetically to any of them, and only legally to one (hello, husband!). But this is the family I have chosen, the family we have made.

I came from a small family. There weren’t generations of large families, leading to cousins everywhere. There was me, my brother, two aunts, three cousins. One set of grandparents that I talked to. One grandfather that I didn’t.

So any gathering really could fit around my mother’s dining room table.

It was lovely. But then I moved away and people died—I mean that generationally. Like, my Grandparents passed away 20+ years ago, and people form their own family units. You know how it goes.

And then my brother moved to Indianapolis, and my parents to southern Virginia, and my Aunt Jeannie lost her fight with cancer, and so did my cousin Trace, and the family kept shrinking.

My aunt Peggy did try to stem the tide of attrition by adopting her husband’s kids, which gave me two bonus cousins, but.

Still, not a big family. And a family that is scattered to the winds at this point.

And so, we have built a covenant out of a ragtag bunch of gamers, funny, smart as shit. Jen, Sean. Nisha and her kids, Leila and Nora. Me and Kevin and FL. Many animals. We love each other just like we share DNA. We share Wordle scores every day and play games on the weekends and wrap our arms around each other when things get rough. And that’s really all that matters.

And today is a family game day, and that is amazing.

And now on to faux-anuary. Still mad at you, WordPress.

I think that has varied over the course of my life. When I was young, I thought a lot about the future. After John died, I thought a lot about the past, about stuff I wished we had done differently, about what choices we could have made that would have changed our outcome.

And now, the precarious political situation here in the states has me thinking probably too much about the future. Which pings my anxiety, but that’s a side effect I will have to live with cause nothing’s going to change for the next four years.

2600 years ago, Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu famously said:

“If you are depressed you are living in the past. 
If you are anxious you are living in the future. 
If you are at peace you are living in the present.”

― Lao Tzu

Juliana reminds me of this all the time. She asks me where I am living, as I worry about a possible outcome of a possible future decision. So, learning to live in the present, to take things as they come, to be at peace…well, that’s the goal.

It’s so not working, but that’s the goal.

Love y’all.