Christmastime is Here . . . Wait. Replace "Christmastime" with "My Screaming Mortality".

I made the mistake of listening to the song "Christmastime is here" on the Charlie Brown Christmas Soundtrack (I think, maybe one of my most prized possessions).

Big mistake, friends.

I think the first few months of the year are mildly depressing for me because I know that Christmas is as far away as it can possibly be.

I'm not one of those crazies that listen to Christmas music year round (I think I just lied) but it always seems to mean more outside of the traditional "Christmas season." And yet, when it really is Christmastime, it always seems so trite. Why is this? Is it because no other music is played, ever, anywhere during this time? The beautiful songs that tug mercilessly on heart strings are singing about this time, yet it seems so mediocre. Is it the saturation that kills it? Is it the Old Navy commercials with people jumping in and out of presents? Why don't I like Christmas music at Christmas time? Well, rather, I don't like it as much.

It doesn't have that quick pang that hits you center mass when you hear the first few notes of a great Christmas song.


But it's not Christmastime. It's now the "new year."

2007.

I graduated high school six years ago.

Where have I been? High school seemed to last so long, yet that was only 4 years.

It's been 10 years since my freshman year in high school.

If I had kept with the whole "orthopedic surgeon" thing, I would have been in the middle of Med School right now.

I'm a youth pastor, which I love. I'm doing what I know I'm supposed to do. I'm doing what I went to college to do. I'm doing what I dreamt about doing in high school. But, honestly, I feel vaguely unfulfilled.

Why?

Maybe it's because I'm about a month away from being 24. Which is one year away from 25.

A quarter of a century is me.

What have I done? Graduated college? Actually, no. I'm still working on my one, last, remaining class.

What have I created? A stack of half-thought out stories? A ream of melodramatic poems (blech. I hate poetry. Maybe just my own. Why do I write it, again?) Pages and pages of pretty decent story ideas that I'm too afraid of messing up by actually attempting to put them to paper? A good, healthy youth group?

Yeah, that last one. Everyone I talk to and everything I read says that that last one will really only happen with a good deal of time. Years. Who has that kind of time? I'm almost a quarter of a century old.

My own screaming mortality is challenging me to a staring contest.

I feel like I've been here a long time. In my mind was an image, I think, of a group of kids that were fundamentally different after just 6 months under my leadership. We've made some great strides, but I haven't lived up to my delusions of grandeur.

Actually, I'm just afraid I'll screw everything up some how.

Isn't that really what we're all afraid of ? About everything?

What could have been different? Could I have been more assertive? Done more with what has been provided me? Been more observant of the needs around me?

When I was a kid, every day seemed so long. I looked at my chubby face in the mirror and wondered what I'd look like as a man (answer: pretty much the same. More facial hair, though.) I saw the adults in my life and wondered if I would ever get there. With each day an eternity, would I ever actually become an adult, or would it be this intangible goal, past my grasp, well over the horizon of my life? They all seemed to have it together.

Sometimes I feel like I've missed something. Some key step that acts as that missing gear that gets the machinery up and running. After eternity days as a kid, something clicked over and sent my day-to-day into a rocketing snowball of time. Was there something that got lost in the fury?

No.

I know that it's just the way it is. For everybody, probably. Nobody's really got the answers. Not all of them.

We're all just doing the best that we can.

FUN FACT: I've collected knives since I was 5 years old. I remember that's when my dad gave me my first one; it was a Buck. I took it to the ditch (why???) and whittled a stick. Ah, memories.

MUSIC SNOB: "Quality Revenge at Last" by Hey Mercedes.