Think Geek's Cyber Therapy & Christmas Card Hoarding

Check this out.  If you are openly geeky, fresh out of the basement geek, or still video gaming geek then you will appreciate thinkgeek.com's clearance section on this fine Cyber Monday.

Since I started my self blinding technique of playing every video game I saw till the wee hours of the night I've been a geek.  Although seeing the Starwars Disc trilogy on Laser Disc definitely pushed me to geek out pretty early in life.

I am not a huge consumer, but the Monday's after a Thanksgiving holiday are hard.  My wife was just saying how we could use the next week off.  Seeing thinkgeeks humorous products and reading every last description is nothing short of therapy for the Monday blues.  It's enough to lift my spirits and remind me I need to get to those Merry Christmas + Happy New Year cards I've started.

This whole business of writing up winter holiday cards and sending them has never been my cup of tea.  Normally we'll receive 20 or so from our good friends and family and we've never gotten to the point were we are sending anything back!  Seem rude?  Probably.  I've finally mustered up the creative stamina to put together a bunch of Christmas cards using some 140lb Arches water color paper with winsor & newton watercolors.  I'll be making paintings all sorts of sizes with this, but I see the thank you cards as a warm up to the pieces I will sell.

I painted a bonsai Juniper tree for my good friends from Oregon, and some pine branches for others.  Eventually when I'm done I'll proceed to actually write something inside these cards to warm cheer up those who read them and don't throw them out or loose them.

Writing something meaningful is a strange difficult process.  My card receiving list started with people who have invited me to their house or who've I've invited over.  Then I thought about those who I've done church related activities with.  And the list grew when I added those who have done hobby related stuff with me or given me really good advice related to crafts.  I've also added cards for my kids teachers and those faithful few who have sent me cards year after year knowing they may not get a response.

All of this thinking through the year and taking time to thank those who've been a part of my life, makes me realize one thing.  Where did these thinking resources come from?  After all I can't even remember the last time I sent out Holiday cards.  The answer is simple.  It's from my kids.  They have been potty trained and each year they are becoming more and more independant curious little kids.  They are helping out more and the invisible weight of responsibility my wife and I feel gets lighter and lighter.  The phase of our lives where we were to exhausted to handle glassware is slowly passing... ever so slowly.

There are still messes to clean up, but they are more infrequent.  The long cries are slowly changing over to polite requests and through all of this, the dark corridors of my mind --so often ignored-- are beginning to get air.  Starting with being a little more thankful of those who selflessly give me their time and looking at what has been going on outside the home around our family.