I have four children.

They watch me.

In order to know how to behave and what to do, they watch me. As they are growing, I am their main example of an adult. They might not realize that they’re learning from me, but they are.

How do I speak to their mother? That is how they will speak to their wives.

How much TV do I watch? That is what they will watch.

What sports do I follow? They’ll probaby enjoy those later too.

How do I fill my free time? That’s how they’ll learn to occupy themselves.

Which is why I want you to tell me to stop if you see me playing games on my phone. I want to stop doing that, because it is a waste of time.

What good is it, really? Are my children going to brag to their friends about how well I play cards by myself? And they’re not even real cards – I’m just tapping my finger on a rectangle of glass.

When my kids are grown, which will they remember: that I played soccer in the yard with them or that I spent their childhood looking at a rectangle in my hands?

I read an article in WORLD magazine that discussed the rise of online games. While it has been great for the people at Zynga, the makers of Farmville and Words with Friends, I wonder how great it is for the general population.

The main quote from someone at Zynga stood out to me. He said how their games were perfect for filling idle time throughout the day.

The problem I have with that is that our brains need rest. Bits of downtime throughout the day are good for the brain.

People need to learn how to be quiet without being bored. To be unoccupied peacefully.

Can you be alone with only your thoughts for company?

If not, what does that say about your thoughts?

How prevalent is daydreaming anymore?

From where would the great ideas come if everyone is Drawing Something instead of Doing Something?

It seems to me that any new development or trend in society was foretold by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World. And online games are no exception.

On the surface, at first glance, you would equate Huxley’s soma to today’s illegal drugs. Which is true to some degree, but I extend that to anything that placates the masses into complacency.
Are there grumblings in the population? Release a new app for their phones! Are the people unhappy? Stream them some more movies!

People consume and consume and consume. We hear about that in the current obesity studies and health measures. But shouldn’t the same principle apply to our minds?

If all I’m doing is consuming games and apps and tweets and blogs, is my mind being exercised or stuffed?

I try to produce as much as I consume – match my caloric output with my input and limit my input. That applies to the web/internet/social media too. I’m producing things now – the key is to figure out how to produce useful things. More puns are fun, but what good does that do the world?

I need to also apply that to my spiritual life. To be still and know that He is God. To meditate on His Word. And then to produce. I am excellent at sitting in the pew and consuming. How can I balance my spiritual input with my spiritual output? I bet it starts with my four children.

In summary:
a bit of entertainment = fine,
excess entertainment = amusing yourself to death.

(If it was true for television, then it is even more true for the things that succeed the TV).

Last year, we inherited a large play structure from some friends. The only cost was time and effort in that we had to remove it and transport it ourselves. After an afternoon of breaking concrete and sawing extra posts and digging, we had the fort on the trailer and drove it 30 miles to our house. That was slow going, but we got it there.

Arrival

Here is how it arrived.

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I found a way to get a free car wash for every four trips to the gas station.

It might not be the best quality wash. It might leave some drips and streaks. And it requires some effort on your part. But it is free.

Just take the windshield squeegee and, after cleaning your windshield, clean the side of your vehicle. Every fill-up, do a different side: 4 sides = 1 complete wash every 4th time.

I left the bottom of the door alone, so you could see the before and after.

I know you could do the whole vehicle at once, resulting in a free car wash for every one trip to the gas station. But that would be too obvious.

Here is a summary of a recent Saturday – a day in the life of Some Guy. You could consider it to be somewhat typical.

• Get awakened by a child
• Get breakfast for the kids
• Say goodbye to wife, who is off to brunch with a friend
• Acquiesce to the kids’ pleas to watch Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood
• Get Delta down for his nap
• Start organizing clutter on my nightstand
• Find an escrow overpayment refund check from mortgage company
• Read the fine print and find out that the check expires on Sunday, when the banks are not open.
• Look at the clock and see that it is 11:30 and the wife has the minivan so there’s no way I’m getting to the bank before noon.
• Find out that the banks are now open until 1:00 on Saturdays.
• Call wife and find out she has just left brunch and will be home by noon.
• Breathe a sigh of relief and a thank-you prayer.
• Start lunch for the kids
• Eat my own lunch
• Go to the bank
• Play outside in the snow with the older kids
• Make hot chocolate for them. Do not forget the marshmallows.
• Replace toilet seat. (This took over an hour because the old bolts had rusted over and needed to be cut off. Have you tried running a Dremel tool on the underside of a toilet seat hinge with only one foot of clearance to the wall? I went through all of my cutoff wheels – the bolt released as the last cutoff wheel broke.)
• Watch baby and set table as wife prepares dinner
• Eat dinner
• Clean dining room
• Watch DVD of some episodes of The Muppet Show season 1 with the whole family
• Put Gamma to bed
• Feed Delta
• Watch Delta crawl around
• Put Alpha and Beta to bed
• Walk Delta around until he’s drowsy
• Put Delta to bed
• Say goodnight to wife
• Internet time for myself, until I’m drowsy. And then some.

I’m writing about censorship today.

A couple weeks ago the internet was ablaze with SOPA and PIPA and other acronyms. Everyone rallied together and defeated the big bad bills that would have let government direct who can say what.

I’m not talking about that kind of censorship.

I censor what comes into my house, what my kids see and hear.

Maybe a better word would be filter.

Or discern.

It is important for parents to protect their children.

People use the term shelter like it is a bad thing. Shelter is like anything else – too much of it is bad, and too little of it is bad too. Kids need to be sheltered for a while, until they are strong enough to withstand that from which the shelter was protecting them.

I like the analogy of the greenhouse. Why do seedlings need to be in a greenhouse? The greenhouse is there to protect them from the elements until they have grown enough to handle them.
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True to the subtitle of this blog, I am providing some random thoughts to start 2012.

• If you give a million monkeys a million typewriters, you’ll end up with rough approximation of the internet. But nothing close to Shakespeare.
• Some say the dishwasher is half empty. Others say the dishwasher is half full. I say that either way there’s a chore that needs to be done.
• It seems like everyone has a breakfast nook, but nobody has a breakfast cranny. My next house is going to have a breakfast cranny

In the course of a calendar year, there will be good days at work and bad days at work.

Sometimes, which is which is random – you won’t know ahead of time if it’s going to be a good day or a bad day.

Other times, you know what it’s going to be, based on what is due or which meeting is scheduled for that day.

Over the course of many years in the workplace, I know I can count on these 3 days to be enjoyable.

• Before or after July 4th

  Depending on what day of the week this holiday falls, people take either the day before or the day after the 4th off. That means a bunch of people are not at work. And that means that you can get done the things that you think are important to get done, without interrupts or re-prioritizations.

• After Halloween

  The reason this day is good is not because of fewer people. The usual number of people still show up to work this day. No, what makes me look forward to this day is the amount of chocolate that enters the building.

  This year, a co-worker brought bags and bags of chocolate because he overestimated the number of trick-or-treaters that would visit his new house. He didn’t want to have to eat all of the extra candy, so he brought it into work. I was glad to help him get rid of it.

• Before Christmas

  We get a full week off work between Christmas and New Year’s, so everyone is winding things down before the start of Christmas break. That means no one is going to ask you to start anything significant. It’s a relaxing time.

  And if you have a good boss, like I had my first year in this job, he will come around some time between lunch and normal quitting time to wish you a merry Christmas. The exchange went a little something like this:
  Boss: Are you doing actual work, or are you just filling time until the end of the day?
  Underling: I’ve finished all the assigned tasks…
  Boss: Go home then, and have a good break.
  Underling: Thanks!

  It doesn’t happen every year, but being dismissed early is a nice touch of the holiday spirit.

Then Joshua dismissed the people, each to his inheritance.

Joshua 24:28