Forever Winter Break

A seasonal check in

What are these days, these winter break days? Don’t they all just flow together into one misshapen lump. For whatever reason, this one feels particularly long. Here, in my 18th year of being a dad, I’m realizing that a lot of the patterns of my year revolve around the arbitrary school break schedule devised by the public school system. It’s mostly become part of my brainwiring at this point; I barely escaped that schedule myself before I was thrust back into it with my first kid’s kindergarten matriculation. What was that, ten years free of winter/summer/spring/memorial day/teacher conference breaks? It’s a hard gravitational force to escape.

It’s lovely though, really it is. Days of sleeping in, of late night movie-watching, of twice weekly library visits. We went to some holiday parties; we hosted one. Milo and I are currently constructing a D&D-themed Lego set and I wonder if it’s to be our last Lego set together. That’s got some bittersweet taste to it. He’s eleven now and his interests are listing elsewhere (to D&D, mainly).

With all this time on my hands, you’d think I’d have plenty to spend on writing posts here on the Machine Shop — but I haven’t been! Apologies for the radio silence on my end, but I just handed off the first draft of my book to my editor and finished a song that has something to do with this stop-motion animation movie they’re making up in the wilds of Hillboro — and wasn’t I suddenly longing for some kind of break from writing writing writing. And of hearing my own voice. I hope you’ll forgive me.

I’m curious though: as I’m drawing up on my third year of making work for this Substack, I’m probably due a check-in with you, its subscribers. What would you like to see more of in 2025? What’s good about this thing? What could be better? I’d love to get your feedback. Because of my post-election unpaid comment embargo, that feedback will have to come from my paid subscribers (thank you, one and all), so if you’re doggedly set on digesting the stuff I put up here gratis, you should reach out to someone who is a paid subscriber and make them comment for you.

Onward 2025!

p.s. If you haven’t read Tony Tulathimutte’s Rejection and you’re the sort that wouldn’t be bothered by reading possibly the filthiest fiction you may have ever read, I can’t recommend it high enough. It’s been a while since I laughed out loud reading a book, and I was chortling away — chortling! — reading this collection of interconnected short stories.