Twelve years later, I still haven't learned to live in the here and now

I made one New Year's resolution for the year 2012 and failed miserably at it.

I have, in fact, failed at it every year since.

My resolution then was to be more present-focused, more mindful of the current moment. It's supposed to relax you and promote better long-term mental and physical health.

But I'm simply no good at it. I'm always looking ahead, and to date I've found no effective way of changing that.

Commiserate with me, then, as you read what I posted on this blog exactly 12 years and 1 month ago today. I was so optimistic, so naive.

And so wrong.

December 31, 2011
"Learning to live in the here and now" 

As I type this, I'm sitting in Starbucks with a mocha light Frappuccino and a piece of coffee cake, and all is right with the world.

It has taken me the better part of four decades to learn that. Dozens of times a day, I get to do things that make me happy, and for most of my life I've been utterly incapable of appreciating them. It has always been about accomplishing The Next Big Thing, whatever that may be...a new job, another child, running a marathon, whatever. I always find myself on the way to doing something, rather than enjoying what I'm doing at the time.

Does anyone else have trouble with the whole Living in the Moment thing? I do, but I'm happy to say that if nothing else, the year 2011 has made me (a) recognize what I was missing, and (b) start to learn how to enjoy the present.

Terry always says I don't know how to relax, and honestly, she's right. I'm always moving, always planning, always restless. What's wrong with just sitting? Why can't I do nothing at all and not feel guilty about it? Well, I'll tell you what, that's going to change. The only goal I'm setting for 2012 is that by this time next year, I'm going to be a pro at doing nothing. I'll be the king of inactivity.

That's not to say that productivity is bad. We all lead busy lives and stuff has to get done. Nothing wrong there. But being in Accomplishment Mode 100% of the time is bad for you in so many ways, as I've learned over the last several months (funny what an E.R. visit for chest pains will do for you). Slowing down is not the same as slacking.

Of course, having the option to relax is a byproduct of living in a crazily affluent society like ours. If you're constantly worrying where your next meal is coming from, sitting under a tree reading poetry isn't as much of a viable choice. So simply living where we do is a reason to be thankful, and I am.

I suppose these are the kinds of things we think about on the cusp of a new year. It's a good time for reassessment, reflection and planning. We set New Year's resolutions, and if you're as tightly wound as I am, they're usually laughably unrealistic and you're forced to give up on them by mid-January.

I've finally come to the realization that one modest resolution fulfilled is a thousand times more valuable than 10 crazy resolutions left to die.

How come nobody told me that 20 years ago? Well, my mom actually did and still does. I always thought I was one of those people who was good at listening to what their mother tells them, but I suppose not. Her constant admonitions for me to slow down and relax have, for the most part, gone unheeded.

But not this year. Not this time around. For my family's sake, and for my own sake, I guess, it's time to learn how to dial it down a notch or 10. What worries me, though, is that even as I write those words, I'm thinking to myself, "I've spent too long on this post. Gotta finish up and get some other stuff done."

Apparently this isn't going to be easy...

(EDITOR'S NOTE: It wasn't.)

I don't care what my Zoom background looks like, but should I?

 

(NOTE: Since I wrote this post a few weeks ago, I've taken to coming into the office every day and not working from home at all. I'm sure there will be days when I'll still need to work from home, but who knew I would ever make this kind of switch? I just personally find that I focus better when I'm in the office. Anyway, let's get on with it...)

The headline today would be more accurate if it read, "I don't care what my Teams background looks like, but should I?" At my company we use Microsoft Teams rather than the more popularly known Zoom platform for video conferencing, but it felt like "Zoom" might connect better with potential readers who don't know what "Teams" is.

Anyway, the photo above is what you're going to get if you're on a Teams meeting with me on the occasions when I work from home. I'm sitting in my upstairs office, and you can clearly see some of the stuff I've hung on the wall, my folding closet doors, and a glimpse over my shoulder of one of the two bookshelves in the room.

There's nothing there particularly distracting or embarrassing, as far as I'm concerned. I know a lot of people like to blur their background when they're in a remote work meeting, while others use CGI-like pre-fab backgrounds that either show the company's logo or place them in a fake room in some exotic location.

True story: When I worked at Goodyear, one of my colleagues used a built-in Teams background that made it look to me like she in a nice urban hotel room. The first time I saw it, I figured she was in Brussels or Luxembourg, two places where Goodyear has offices.

When her background stayed the same meeting after meeting over the course of a few weeks, I finally said to her, "I can't believe how long you've been in Europe. This must be quite a business trip!" To which she replied, "What? No, I'm at home. This is a fake background."

Oops. I had no idea, partly because she tended to keep her head very still during meetings. When someone with the artificial background feature turned on moves, you can usually tell the background isn't real by the way it (or their head) distorts.

I'm very open when it comes to sharing details of my personal/home life with co-workers, but I get that others might want to maintain a distinct boundary between the two. They don't necessarily want me to see their living room in the background during a meeting, and that's just fine.

But, conversely, is it any problem for them to see my home office in all its cluttered glory? Like that signed portrait of Sting reflecting the room light and going out of frame on the left side of the picture? I'll tell you about it if you're interested, but my real concern is that it isn't in any way distracting or inappropriate for a work meeting.

I don't think it is, but I'm open to other thoughts.

Here's a promise, though: If for any reason my laptop ever ends up in the bathroom with me, you will never know. As far you'll be concerned, judging from the background, I'll be on a Hawaiian beach.

Even I have my limits.

Another kid birthday, another milestone in the family

Despite being given the correct spelling of "birthday," the AI Blog Post Image Generator came back with this.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned the fact that our oldest daughter Elissa will soon turn 30 (more on that when it actually happens in late March).

Tomorrow we hit another significant age landmark when our youngest, Jack, turns 18.

This is going to be a fun one to celebrate, partly because the "baby" of the family is finally a legal adult, and partly because Terry and I are thankfully in between milestone birthdays of our own. Neither of us is particularly anxious to reach another age that ends in "0" any time soon.

Whether you have one child or four or eight or have reached Duggar territory, your kids' birthdays are as much a big deal to you as a parent as they are to the kids themselves. They're little markers along the journey that say to the world, "Hey look! I kept this one alive another year!"

When your child completes a revolution around the sun, you have two choices:

• You can celebrate with them and be thankful for the blessing they represent in your life.
• Or you can use it as an occasion to fret over your own mortality, the perils of aging, the fleeting years, etc.

I'm forcing myself to choose the first one, but I get the temptation to go the other way.

Happy birthday, Jack!

I own the GOAT of pencil sharpeners

Behold the be-all, end-all of pencil sharpening devices: The Panasonic KP-310.

I am hesitant to tell you how excited I am to be the proud owner of a Panasonic KP-310 electric pencil sharpener.

Even I realize how odd it is to be thrilled over any device whose sole purpose is to sharpen the graphite point on a pencil.

But guys, this thing is amazing. I get tingly when one of my pencil nubs starts wearing down because I know I will have the chance to sharpen it using the KP-310.

I have mentioned here before that I am a pencil guy through and through. I'll use pens when I have to, but I prefer a good, old-fashioned #2 pencil.

NEVER a mechanical pencil, mind you. Those things are abominations. We shall not speak of them again.

Here's a true thing you may find hard to believe: Not only is there a museum devoted solely to the history of pencil sharpeners, my family has visited it.

It's the Paul A. Johnson Pencil Sharpener Museum, located in Logan, Ohio, in our state's Hocking Hills region. We took a family trip to Hocking Hills in 2012 and I think we ended up at the pencil sharpener museum simply because it was there.

At the time we kind of made fun of it. Now I want to go back and more closely examine its centuries' worth of pencil sharpeners with the proper amount of respect.

It's admittedly a small place. A very, very small place. Basically it's a shed. But the point is, it exists!

Anyway, I had never given much thought to the varying levels of quality among electric pencil sharpeners until I moved into my office at the Materion Corporation in June 2022.

The previous occupant (my former Dix & Eaton co-worker Danielle Snider) had left behind a Panasonic KP-310. Maybe she inherited it from the person who had the office before her. Maybe she never used it. I don't know.

What I do know is that the KP-310 was a revelation. Most other electric pencil sharpeners require you to rotate the pencil during operation to ensure a consistent level of sharpening all the way around. Not the KP-310. You just stick that mother in there straight on and it comes out sharp and even within seconds.

You also have to be careful with other sharpeners that you don't push the pencil with too much force, lest the small electric motor gets overwhelmed and it freezes up on you.

Again, this does not happen with the KP-310. Go ahead and push on the pencil. It can (and will) handle it.

I'm not kidding when I say the minute I submit this post I'm going downstairs to the kitchen junk drawer to collect the pencils there and bring them upstairs for a good KP-310 sharpening.

I should have mentioned that I have one of these little miracle devices at home in addition to the one at work. Got it off eBay for just $8.49.

What a steal.

The years pass so quickly...yet sometimes they don't

A woman at our church recently celebrated her 102nd birthday. If she's still around a couple of years from now, she will probably have fairly clear memories of events that happened a full century ago.

This is mind boggling.

Then again, almost everything about the passage of time amazes me. It's like that saying "the days are long but the years are short."

Individual days don't exactly pass slowly for me, but they feel every bit as long as they are (if that makes sense). This is probably because I'm still in the slog of daily work and routine. Often the span of time from 8 in the morning until 5 in the afternoon feels like a week.

I may have a different mindset in, say, 15 years when I hope to be retired. At that point, as I approach my 70s, those same days and weeks will probably fly by with distressing swiftness.

Right now what flies by are the years. Without looking at a calendar, my sense is that it's 2013. Maybe 2015. There's no way it's 2024. It just can't be.

And yet it is.

It feels like I was just in my mid- to late 40s, but my birth certificate confirms I've crossed the line into my mid-50s.

My parents are gone and so is one of my siblings. Others I've known and loved have also passed on. Life is so different from what it used to be, if only because the cast of characters around me has turned over so much.

Then there's this little bit of additional weirdity: While the year 2000 feels like a long time ago, 1980 doesn't at all. Twenty years ago seems like a lifetime, but 40 years ago has a "just yesterday" quality to it.

How? Why? What is it about our memories and our sense of time that starts to turn upside down the older we get?

I can't explain any of it. The only thing I can do, I figure, is to live as much in the here and now as possible and let the chips fall where they may.

I may not live to 102, but if I can shift my mindset to be more present-focused, I can make the most of whatever time I do have.

And maybe feel a little more stable when it comes to passing years and the memory of what once was.

Seriously, though, Reagan is still president, right?

Hockey, Jared and me: Bonding over sports with your kid

That's my son Jared at his office in St. Petersburg, Florida. It's an awfully big office.

All of my children have been involved in athletics of one kind or another, but only one is what you might call a "sports fan" like me.

That would be my son Jared. Since he was very young, our main connection has been sports. I coached him in t-ball and youth soccer, and over the years we have attended baseball, basketball, hockey and football games, and have made visits together to three professional sports halls of fame.

I assume this had at least some influence on Jared's choice of profession. He works for the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team as Coordinator, Baseball Information & Communications, which means he spends a lot of time researching, writing and disseminating stats and information about the Rays to media and other stakeholders.

A lot of fathers and sons (and mothers and sons, and mothers and daughters, and fathers and daughters) connect through sports, whether it's competing or spectating or both. For us, most of the memories revolve around hockey.

For example, we're in our 17th year as season ticket holders for the Cleveland Monsters of the American Hockey League. Jared and I have probably attended more Monsters games over that time than anyone else in the family.

We have also travelled to Columbus, Pittsburgh and Buffalo to watch National Hockey League games, and we even co-own a fantasy hockey team together.

There was also a stretch during the winter of 2010 when I would take Jared to a nearby ice rink every Sunday afternoon so he could learn to skate and play hockey from a coach. While he didn't take up the sport competitively after that, I do believe it deepened his appreciation of and love for the game.

All of this is to say that, while he and I talk about a lot more than just hockey and sports in general, that's where our strongest ties have been formed. We have cheered together for various hapless Cleveland teams, mourned playoff losses, and celebrated the Cavaliers' glorious NBA title in 2016.

Next month – one month from today, as a matter of fact – I will join him in Florida as we attend an NHL game in Tampa between the host Lightning and my beloved Ottawa Senators. It was a Christmas gift from Jared and his girlfriend Lyndsey, and I think it was a perfect one.

He's a good guy, that Jared. And an excellent fantasy hockey co-owner.

Most of all, he's my best sports friend.

I remember when laptops were magical technology reserved for the very rich and powerful

I started traveling extensively for work in the late 90s and early 2000s, and it was then that I first encountered The Laptop People in airports.

They were always nicely dressed, and they would invariably open their carry-on bags and break out their laptop computers the minute they took their seats on the plane.

Compared with today's technology, these devices barely fit the definition of laptops, as they often took up considerably more room than the average person's lap offered.

But they were all we knew, and to me they were amazing. I worked regularly on comparatively bulky machines tethered to a desk. The idea of a fully functioning computer you could take with you (and operate on battery power alone) was mind-blowing.

The batteries didn't last long, of course, and later when WiFi became a thing, connectivity could be spotty. But you could work on a memo or a spreadsheet 35,000 feet in the air, which I thought was just about the coolest work-related thing imaginable.

I think most of The Laptop People back then were earnest in their desire to be productive. They didn't care that their small (large?) computers could be viewed as status symbols.

But a subset of them were very showy in getting the laptop out of the bag, setting it up on the small seatback tray in front of them, and asking (loudly) whether they could connect to the airport concourse WiFi while the plane was still parked at the gate.

These people have evolved today into The Loud Cell Phone Talkers.

I bring all of this up because I now have my first-ever personal laptop. I've had many laptops before, but they have all been loaned to me by my employers. Terry got me a very nice Asus for Christmas, the first one I can truly call my own.

For what it's worth, while the luster of laptops has obviously faded over time, I'm still very discrete in my use of it in public places. And I don't talk loudly on my phone, either.

I'm more proud of those two things than of having my own laptop, if I'm being honest.

When my kids won the Sunday trash collection staredown

For many years, Sunday evening has been the time when we collect garbage and recyclables from around our house and roll them out to the street for pick-up the next morning.

When we first moved in and the kids were little, I would handle this chore alone. I would walk around the house emptying various wastebaskets and lining them with fresh grocery bags, dump the recyclable items into the bin that sits next to our driveway, and stuff everything else into a black plastic garbage bag that would get thrown into our large Kimble Services trash container.

At some point maybe 15 years ago, I decided it was time for the kids to start emptying their own trash and helping me with this chore. I assigned each child a room or rooms for which they were responsible. I think there was even a little chart on our refrigerator.

It seemed like a good system in theory. In practice, it was less than ideal.

The problem was that once I decided it was garbage time – usually around 6pm on Sunday – there was a better-than-even chance some of the kids wouldn't be home, and an even better chance that few would conform to my timeline.

I would yell up the stairs that it was time to collect the trash, and maybe one kid, sometimes two, would immediately respond. I would then have to remind at least one of them, usually two, a second time to empty the cans in their designated rooms.

Often a third reminder was needed.

Eventually it would get done, but it took far longer than if I had simply done the whole thing myself.

I know what I should have done, of course. I should have threatened punishment for the malfeasant. I should have incentivized them not only to do it, but to do it immediately when told. I should have stayed strong to help them understand (a) this was not a request, and (b) there would be penalties for those who didn't listen.

Instead I made the poorest parenting decision possible. I chose the way of the tired and the impatient. After a couple of months, I just started doing the whole thing myself again. It was quicker and much less of a hassle.

It was also an undeserved victory for my children. The hammer should have been thrown down.

I was just so chronically fatigued in those days that the path of least resistance was my default.

For what it's worth, my nearly-18-year-old son Jack will help me collect the garbage any time I ask, so clearly we did something right with him.

But the rest of those ingrates? For those among them who plan on having children, I want to be there when they try and fail to get my grandkids to empty the trash for them.

Of course, knowing them, they'll have their own kids trained correctly.

It makes me angry just thinking about it.

We're middle-aged people, which means we need to figure out the downsizing thing

The AI Blog Post Image Generator did a decent job creating this image from the prompt "middle-aged people in a one-floor house." I've certainly seen it distort faces worse than this.

We recently helped my sister-in-law Chris move into a new home. Well, Terry far and away did the most work there. Jack and I just chipped in a few times each on carrying the heavy stuff.

The point is, Chris has new digs, and it's a house with no upstairs and no basement. Everything is on one floor with no steps to navigate.

This is a common move for those of us who are not yet old but who can see senior citizenhood somewhere on the distant horizon. You may be able to fly up and down stairs now, but what happens in, say, 15 years?

And what happens once most or all of your kids have flown the coop? Do you keep (or even need) a bigger home? Or do you move into something smaller and more manageable?

Terry and I are, for the foreseeable future, staying in the house where we raised our kids. We've been here 20 years and are working to remodel/spruce up the basement, kitchen, deck and various walls that desperately need painting.

Investing that kind of cash suggests you're going to stay somewhere for the long haul, and I suppose that's accurate in our case. We have no plans to move anytime soon.

Keeping the house relatively clean isn't an issue for us physically right now, and we can still do most of the yard work on our own. We do have a guy who cuts our grass and another who removes the snow from our driveway. But for the most part, we're OK maintaining the place ourselves.

Our house is something like 2,500 square feet with five bedrooms on a half-acre lot. There were many years when we needed every one of those bedrooms, but now we're able to use one as Terry's craft room, one as my office, and another as a nice guest room. I like that arrangement.

There will come a time, though, when we'll be better off in a house like the one Chris has rather than the one we have now, which includes both a sizeable basement and an upstairs.

That decision is probably two decades away, but it will come.

In the meantime, with four of the five kids gone, I kind of like living here and not having to tell someone to get their clothes off the stairs or their backpack off the floor.

You only get so many chances to sleep next to your favorite person

I have a troubling relationship with sleep.

It's not that I don't sleep well. I generally fall asleep quickly and stay asleep all night. The actual sleeping part isn't the problem.

It's more my attitude toward sleep. I know the majority of  people love sleep. They embrace it. They relish sleeping in, hitting the snooze button, and staying warm and comfortable under the covers.

Not me. I see sleep as more of a necessary evil, even an annoyance sometimes. I enjoy being busy and doing things. Sleep gets in the way of that, and while I know my body and brain need to rest and recharge, there are nights when I crawl into bed and can't wait until 5:30am rolls around and my feet hit the floor again.

There is, however, one aspect of going to sleep I love. It's sliding under the covers in the evening and seeing my wife there next to me. It's a feeling of comfort and blessing that almost defies description.

Lately I've become more aware of the fact that this arrangement will not continue indefinitely. I don't mean to be morbid, but the reality is that at some point, one of us won't be there to get into bed anymore.

This is a terrible thing to be thinking about at this point in my life, especially when you realize it's highly likely both of us will be around for many, many more years to come.

But that doesn't change the inescapable fact that the number of times I get to kiss my wife goodnight and turn out the light is not infinite.

The sensible reaction to this – and the attitude I take, happily – is to be grateful for the opportunity now rather than dread the day it goes away.

I am thankful for many, many things in my life, but maybe none more than lying there in the dark, looking to my left and seeing Terry there. It makes me feel safe, secure, happy and blessed. It's the one thing that leads me to think, "OK, maybe these next 7 hours aren't ones that will be wasted in inactivity, but rather spent next to one of the greatest blessings I'll ever receive."

I still can't wait to get going again the next morning, but if you have to sleep, you might as well do it next to someone you love.

When people ask about your older kids, be ready to quickly recite their age, job status, and one interesting factoid about them

This is us with our kids (and our son-in-law Michael thrown in for good measure) at Disney World a couple of years ago. I've always liked this picture.

Nowadays when I talk with family members, co-workers, or my children's old teachers, I am expected to give a full report on how each of the kids is doing.

"How is everyone?" will come the question. Usually the person asking wants more than just "They're all good!" and something significantly less than a 20-minute dissertation on the health and wellbeing of our offspring.

I have answered this question so often that I can usually give them the information they want in less than 60 seconds. It goes something like this:

"Well, Elissa is 29, lives in Willoughby, and is the Content Marketing Manager for Citizens Climate Lobby, a climate change advocacy nonprofit. She was recently voted Funniest Staff Member there.

"Chloe is 27 and lives in Akron. She is a few months from finishing her PhD in Neuroscience and eventually wants to go to medical school. I know, crazy, right?

"Jared is 25 and living in Tampa. He works in communications for the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team. He and I co-own a fantasy hockey team, though he's really the one who knows what he's doing.

"Melanie is 23, living in Wickliffe, and has her degree in marketing. She has somehow learned to stop looking at her phone all the time and be present in the moment, for which I admire her. I want her to teach me.

"Jack is 17 and the only one still living at home. He is working at Sweet Berry Market in Wickliffe and considering a career as an electrician. I like a quiet house, but I also like having him there with us. He can stay pretty much as long as he likes."

And so on...

Even when people are genuinely interested, that's really about as much as they need and want to know.

And about as much as I can remember off the top of my head.

The fun dynamic of having adult children

The AI Blog Post Image Generator still has trouble with eyes (inconsistent coloring, rampant cases of strabismus, etc.), but it got the job done here...I think.

In less than three months, our oldest child Elissa will turn 30. I'm not sure how well she'll handle it, but it's coming.

As a parent, it's natural to experience mixed feelings over such a milestone. Having a kid in her 30s can understandably make you feel somewhat ancient.

I, however, am embracing it. It turns out having adult kids is enjoyable...a lot more enjoyable than I realized it would be.

Like when I go out with one of my children, I sometimes buy them a beer. Just yesterday I was giving them juice in a sippy cup. Now we're sharing overpriced IPAs.

Or when we're gathered around the table for a holiday meal or someone's birthday dinner, they're very free with details of some of the things they used to do as teenagers, the details of which Mom and Dad were not privy to at the time.

(Admittedly, as fun and funny as these stories are, there are moments when I think, "Oh man...I'm glad I didn't know any of this back then.")

A few weeks ago I spent an evening at the hockey game with my daughter Melanie, and I loved hearing her talk about the ways she's navigating adult life. She is so self-aware, so disciplined and so hard working that in some ways I can't believe this is the same person who, just 10 years ago, could never be counted on to remember all of her soccer equipment on game days and constantly needed someone to bring a pair of cleats or a set of shin guards to her at the very last minute.

You know conceptually that your kids are going to grow up, and you hope they'll mature and become independent, responsible adults. When it actually happens, though, it can catch you pleasantly off guard.

You think to yourself, "Wow, I not only love this 27-year-old person, I like hanging out with her. We did something right with this one!"

It's a feeling of vindication you sometimes believe will never come when you're knee-deep in raising toddlers and feel like everything you do is wrong.

Stay strong, young parents. You're doing a much better job than you think you are. When those kids of yours grow up, you'll see what I mean.

Social isolation is the price I pay for eating sauerkraut and sardines

While I spent much of 2023 eating too much food, I will take some credit for at least eating healthy food.

Most days you can count on me to ingest plenty of fruits and vegetables, some leafy greens at lunch, a lot of whole grains and nuts, and at least a small portion of fish.

There are two downsides to eating healthy like this.

One is that it is expensive and somewhat inconvenient. I make frequent shopping trips just to keep myself stocked with healthy stuff, and I am consistently taken aback by the price of, say, berries. Berries are expensive. So are many other fruits, especially when you buy organic.

But then you ask yourself how much your health is worth, and that admittedly takes some of the sting out of it.

The other drawback is that, in my experience, there are some healthy foods that simply stink. I mean, like, they literally smell.

For example. I try to take in some sort of fermented food every day, either in the form of sauerkraut or kimchi. I like the smell and taste of both, but neither of my housemates agrees.

The same holds true for sardines. When I want to crack open a tin of sardines, I take it out to the garage and stand there with a fork eating it to avoid getting sardine smell in the house.

I do this out of courtesy to Terry and Jack, even though I feel like a smoker huddling in front of an office building getting a nicotine fix.

Ten years ago, I never would have imagined myself a social outcast for wanting to eat tiny fish. I guess when I'm 120 years old and still ticking, I'll have the last laugh.

I'll be standing outside eating sardines, of course, but I'll still be laughing.

You have a 10-day grace period during which you're still allowed to write "2023"

I feel like it isn't nearly as much of an issue as it used to be when we all paid our bills and made large store purchases via check, but I have good news when it comes to writing the incorrect year on any document.

Whether it's a school paper, a work email, or yes, even a check, I hereby grant you free rein to mistakenly write "2023" without fear of ridicule or penalty from now through Wednesday, January 10.

After that day, if you continue to get the year wrong, the rest of us will call you out in a well-intentioned act of correction. We don't want to make fun of you, but if it takes you that long to adjust, then we're clearly doing you a favor.

Ten days is an arbitrary number, but then no one was stepping up and making an official ruling on this. So I'm taking the initiative here and giving you a defined period during which your foolishness will be tolerated.

Again, though, no mercy will be shown after the expiration date. From January 11 onward, you will need to get your act together and catch up to the rest of us.

"The rest of us" meaning "everybody but me," of course, as I will continue typing "2023" on everything until at least March.

As the one who showed some leadership on this issue, I feel like I deserve a longer reprieve.