It’s now the middle of January, and I’m finally getting around to writing again. We’ve got some things on our plate that are interesting or difficult:

• Looking for a new preschool for Benji. His preschool closes at the end of the year, and right now is the season to look for new preschools for next year. I still kind of can’t believe you have to do this almost a year in advance, but there it is. We found two or three places we’re interested in, and I’m trusting one of those will work out.
• At my work, we’re implementing some new software stuff I’m pretty excited about. One thing is a sharing/sync/cloud backup service called Box, which has a ton of features for businesses, including FINRA compliance. We also are just implementing some financial planning software called MoneyGuidePro, which greatly strengthens our company’s financial planning services for clients. I am actually pretty interested in learning more about these two tools, and I’m getting to spend some time on learning about them.
• Ian’s work, meanwhile, has all sorts of excitement that we’re hoping will come to nothing, but which may result in substantial upheaval.

Meanwhile, Benji continues to grow into an imaginative, silly, intellectual boy who loves jokes and silly things, and develops strong opinions, which he doesn’t hesitate to share with us. His favorite toys are Thomas trains (preferably combined with playdough; he’s always asking us to make playdough covers for his trains) and Matchbox cars, watching short YouTube videos with Ian and then acting out what they watched with his own toys. He also likes playing with other kids, and we’re getting to know a new friend at church, Pastor Travis’s son Will, who is just Benji’s age.

Lastly, I’m not much of a New Year’s Resolution-type person; I more buy into the idea of evaluating and making changes on a more frequent basis. Especially with having a kid, just when you think you have a system or routine that works… it doesn’t work anymore, because your kid has grown up a little bit. Anyway, I did start thinking some about what I’d like to do better this coming year, and the thing I want to focus most on is not comparing myself to others. At preschool, it’s so easy to compare my kid (he can’t button buttons yet and most of the other kids can! Aaaah!) or myself (the moms all seem so put-together and with it, and drive such nice cars, I feel like a church mouse among lab rats); and, of course, in cycling just the act of riding with other people is a comparison (am I faster? Am I slower? He climbed way faster than me, but I had better endurance over the whole ride; he rode more miles than me/climbed more feet than me, so I need to do more).

But my observation has been that whenever I compare myself, one of two things happens: Either I get arrogant, because I think I’m better than the person I compare to; or I feel horrible about myself, because I think I’m not as good. Comparison just naturally leads to judging, and judging is best left to God. Certainly I can’t do it without nastiness of one sort or another resulting. So my goal this year is to work on accepting people for where they’re at, including myself. I’ll do what I can do, and accept the rest as where I’m at. It’s good and healthy to set goals and want to improve, so I’m fine with comparing my past self to my present self; but I’m going to try to get away from comparing myself to outside things or people.

It’s a start.