God Jul!
That’s Merry Christmas in Swedish. I lived in Sweden during my senior year in high school. Being an exchange student was probably one of the hardest things I ever accomplished, but also one of the most fundamental to shaping who I am today.
But I’m not actually interested in focusing on myself or that part of my life tonight. I’m only thinking in terms of a Scandinavian language because I’ve been contemplating jólabókaflód, an Icelandic tradition you may have read about.
Jólabókaflód
Our family flirted with this a couple years ago, but we didn’t ensure that all complied. To be honest, I was the worst about actually permitting myself to just sit and immerse myself in the written word.
We all got books for each other that year, but only some of us spent Christmas Eve (or any other part of the holiday) reading. Others of us were still preoccupied wrapping presents and providing some technical assistance to Santa in the stocking department.
I mentioned to Karl the possibility of us embracing this again this year, but it just didn’t happen.
Realizing the Pattern
If I’m honest, I’ve known for a long time that I rarely give myself the chance to “just” sit and read. Pretty much the only dedicated time I allow myself to read (I’m talking a novel or memoir or something else that takes me ‘elsewhere’ and isn’t a newspaper or magazine article) is after I’ve written my post for the evening and crawled into bed. And the duration of that engagement is often far too short for my taste.
While it’s extremely rare for me not to allow myself to read at least a full page before falling asleep, it’s equally true that I’m often hard pressed to wedge in many more pages than one because I fall asleep mid-sentence.
I’m delighted when I hit my stride in a book and find myself unable to put it down. Yeah, man – that is the best feeling ever: finding a book you can’t put down.
Breaking Out
So, I realize my pattern. And I’m going to make a concerted effort this year to break out of that rut. I want to read more. And I want to write more. It’s as simple as that.
And while Karl and I may not have succeeded in embodying or practicing the essence (or even the superficiality) of jólabókaflód this year, I’m sensing that we may delay its implementation this year until New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day instead. Just because we dropped the ball tonight does not mean we can’t pick it back up over the next several days and run with it.
I feel an aspiration coming on: 2020 may just be the year I do a deep dive into words.
My own personal (and perhaps enduring?) jólabókaflód.
Oh! And Merry Christmas, by the way! God Jul!
(T-703)