Focused at Fifty

I  stood chopping onions on Christmas Eve for John's and my annual holiday open house. A glass of red wine was close by to make sure the party preparations went faster. True to form, I soon starting tearing up from the onions. Wiping the 'onion' tears away, I smiled as I remembered as a child watching my mother chop onions while laughing and crying from them. She was getting ready for her annual holiday party as well. My family was in our small kitchen preparing for the open house that she and Dad hosted each year. We were all laughing and there was this festive energy in the air. Dad was getting the bar ready, making sure we had Piels beer, a couple jugs of Gallo wine, and just the basics: vodka, gin, and Dewar's Scotch. (A far cry from my bar with 30 plus bottles of various booze. LOL)  We kids were just watching our parents get ready, trying to stay out of the way. Soon enough, Adam and I would be ushered downstairs to the family room to be chaperoned by our big...

No resolutions. Just introspection. I do this on the Jewish New Year as well. You try and figure out where you've come from, how you got there, what the heck you are doing in life, and where you will be going. I don't believe in writing that resolution list anymore. I came across a list of resolutions from 10 years ago and could have wrote the same list today. Same projects I want to work on but haven't gotten around to. Same things I want to change about myself and am continuously striving for. So for me, it's a waste of paper.   Therefore, I do the introspection. The year 2012 was a mixed bag for me. I enjoyed being bar manager for the Lodge immensely. I even looked at restaurant/bar managing as an alternative career but rediscovered that as management (even as a volunteer), it comes down on you to cover stuff when the chips are down. I found myself spending more and more time obsessing over the most minutiae of details of the bar.   Giving it up was a re...