​In another small stroke of genius by our fitness facility, they asked members to scribble their thoughts on a large sheet of paper on the wall describing: “What are you looking forward to in 2025?” Here you go:

• Being grateful.
• Starting a new career.
• Getting married.
• Body pump release 3! Yes!
• Biking.
• Jesus.
• Getting in shape.
• Finding something to look forward to.
• The weekend.
• Better body.
• Healing my knee.
• Making 6-figures.
• Next pro fight 2-1-1.
• Graduating nursing school.
• Becoming a father.
• Doing my 5K.
• A skiing trip with my kids.
• Refereeing lots of basketball.
• My next beer.
• Disney cruise with the family.
• Peacefulness.
• Building more muscle at the WAC (Wisconsin Athletic Club).
• Getting married to Zack.
• Spring break.
• February Florida vacation.
• Half Iron Man 6/25.
• Not doing planks.
• Traveling the world with my beautiful wife.
• Graduating MU (Marquette University) 2025.
• Reading 5-6 books a month.
• Best friend’s wedding.
• Reaching college weight.
• Another year with Bianca.
• Prioritizing and loving myself more.
• A new sense of freedom.
• Better grammar and punctuation (aiming and arrow > towards some bad punctuation on the sheet of paper on the wall).
• A better year for my son.
• To creating a webtoon comic about cage fighters. Check out updates @taskytiger.
• Next Harley ride!!!
• Outdoor.
• A better year!
• Being happy being alone. Loving myself.
• Losing 30 more pounds.
• Opening my own business.
• Having better mental health and to let go of toxic moments in the past.
• Enjoy the small things (smiley face).
• Losing weight. Feeling fit.
• Sailing on the “Icon of the Seas” February 2025.
• Snowboarding more often.
• Traveling and getting jacked.
• Swimming and running. Lila.
• Skateboarding.
• Pickles.
• Staying out of jail for the whole year.
• Spring break.
• Enjoy the small things.
• Traveling.

What are you looking forward to?

​Scamming never ends, does it? You think people would learn not to click on misleading, crazy introductions or statements that come through email (or increasingly) text messaging (and who knows where else?).
 
Scamming people goes back a long way. The phone is still a major avenue where some anonymous individual attempts to suck your savings account dry.
 
But it you can go back in history to the snake oil salesman at the traveling carnival. Selling you crap that doesn’t work. Getting you to believe something that’s not true or possible.
 
I’ve come close at times to following up on something that is well written and appears real, but held back each time and sent the inviting message to someone else to get their opinion. Invariably, we have agreed, the special offer was BS. Delete it. Ignore it.

Not everyone does. That’s why the scammers stay after you.
 
There’s someone I know and respect who took it in the shorts. They chose to follow through on some sites that preyed on the elderly and he dove right in. He believed the junk. He swallowed the package of lies whole. His bank account took a hit. It was very sad to see.
 
If you live in a modern economy, you know what many of the scams look like. If you’re vigilant, you block or delete. Still, they keep coming, keep thinking you’ll get soft and bow to their pressure.

The attempts are multi-pronged. They try to break you down in many ways. They grab you with the headline. They mislead you with the greeting.
 
For the sake of humor and enlightenment, here are a few I’ve captured for the reader to file away with knowledge that you can’t trust what comes next. You know it’s spam and a scam when it starts out with:
 
“Hello.”
 
“Good Day.” Must be from Australia. Who do you know there?
 
“My Dearest.” No one talks like that.
 
“Now’s the time.” For what?
 
“Hi.” Self-evident.
 
“Please. May I talk with you?”  No.
 
“Your account.” Hey, dude, you know nothing about my account.
 
“My greetings.” Huh?
 
“Your order is ready.” No it’s not, I haven’t ordered anything from you.
 
“Don’t let bad credit.” I won’t.
 
“Unshackle yourself.” I’m not in jail.
 
“Empower your finances.” They’re already empowered.

"Your account has been." No it hasn't.

​"Having trouble." Nope.
 
Feel free to add your own. Stay vigilant. Keep your hand on your wallet.

​In 2023, for the first time I kept a “jar of positivity.” I’d read about it and thought, “good idea.” You write down over the course of the year the good things that have happened to you and place them in a jar, then collect them at the end of the year and read them to remember and revere. It was a good exercise, and I did it again this year.
A quick summation: those events, gatherings, incidents, actions, whatever, that give the most joy (at least to me) involve hanging out with others in fun situations. This is not surprising given all the data out there regarding people who feel good: their relationships are critical. So, here you go (in no particular order):

1. Heading to the Wisconsin state high school football playoffs with my friend Peter and spending time with his sister after sitting through two frigid games.
2. Thanksgiving in Seattle with our son, visiting Discovery Park, Pike Place Market, the Space Needle, the Pinball Museum. Hanging out, good dinners.
3. Christmas with everyone home.
4. New Year’s eve with my younger brother and his wife, with our alma mater Illinois put a winning touch to one of it’s best football seasons in decades.
5. Our younger daughter’s wedding: father-daughter dance; the ceremony; the reception; seeing friends; dancing like a maniac; golfing with the father of our son-in-law (great course). And, earlier in the year, heading down for practice dancing, golfing with our daughter and son-in-law at Forest Park, getting custard, hanging outside around the firepit with a beer. Before the wedding: our son and nephew photobombing in piggyback fashion a photo taken inside the house. Uncontrollable laughter.
6. River cruise in Milwaukee, out into Lake Michigan with my wife and our Italian exchange student. Sitting in front of the boat and watching the world go by.
7. Golf with softball teammates from the Traitors in Kankakee, IL.
8. Our 50th high school reunion, and finding a fake plastic arm to give people the “CLAW” hold on their heads. Too many laughs. Not enough time.
9. Golfing with a referee buddy for the first time and eagling one of the toughest holes on the course after he hit a majestic 7-iron and I holed a 43-foot putt. Teamwork.
10. Our annual brothers and cousins golf reunion: swimming across the lake with my nephew and not drowning; shooting down the slide into the lake and almost making it crash; hot wings contest; defeating our sons in the annual three-day scramble for the first time in year (playing lights out); good food; great stories; campfire; relaxing.
11. Annual golf tournament with the Wisconsin Security Association and good times with current and former colleagues
12. A new and favorite restaurant serving Nepalese food.
13. A first round win in the playoffs in our 55+ men’s baseball league.
14. Maren Morris concert (first concert in more than 10 years).
15. Comedy Sportz World series featuring Seattle vs. Chicago.
16. Golf before the bridal shower with son-in-law, his brother and father.
17. Running the 800, 400 and 200 in the Wisconsin Masters Games. Okay, jogging. Perhaps shuffling.
18. Annual freebie game with guys from our church at the Milwaukee Brewers, eating subs, catching up with home brews in the parking lot.
19. Trip to Maine: massage from a woman my wife and I have been going to for more than 30 years; spectacular weather; quality time with our older daughter; shooting three straight great rounds at a wonderfully scenic and challenging course. Maybe I was relaxed.
20. Referee camp in Pennsylvania where I serve as a clinician. Helping other officials improve. The drive out and back with my wife.
21. The Hall-of-Fame banquet for our Wisconsin Masters Games. Great to see the accomplishments of older athletes who continue to compete.
22. Watching Caitlin Clark and Iowa in the semifinals and finals of the NCAA women’s DI college basketball championship.
23. Visiting with good friends from Texas, who have built their dream home east of Dallas on a lake: golf, fishing, storytelling, funny late night text messages.
24. Surprising my older brother for his 70th birthday and a round of golf with him his two closest buddies. Conversation, beer.
25. Refereeing the eighth grade basketball B championship contest in the Wisconsin State Games with my good friend John. No exaggeration: we got seven compliments over the course of the last two games of parents and coaches coming up to us afterwards to tell us what an excellent job we did on the court. Earlier we had received four compliments after working a fifth grade game. Remember that.
26. Driving to Minneapolis to the Big Ten men’s basketball tournament with my wife to watch two games. Staying at a boutique hotel in Eau Claire on the drive back and walking over for a good meal and cocktails.
27. Refereeing a high quality high school basketball game with two new partners in a tightly contested battle. Walking out, a huge man beelined to us across the hallway. He comes up, and goes, “That’s the best officiating job we’ve had here this season.” Made our day, perhaps our season.
28. Seeing the “Blizzard Acrobats” with my younger brother and wife. Long walk the next morning on a cold day.
29. Working a Saturday morning high school 9th grade boys basketball game with a guy I’d never met before and feeling like we were on the exact same page the entire game. Zen.
30. Heading down to Washington University in St. Louis and taking in a baseball and basketball game over the course of the weekend, sitting outside on a beautiful spring day and enjoying the sun. Scrambling with my son on the Forest Park golf course to hit three consecutive birdies to break 80. Crushing the ball and dialed in (writing this just now triggered the memory).
31. Text from a friend who said I should be refereeing high school state championship level games. Nice to have friends like that with belief in you.
32. Ongoing LinkedIn conversations with a good friend who my wife and I met on the running/dog walking trail and had him join our Ragnar team in 2023. Stayed in touch ever since.

Connections. Quality time. Conversation. Laughter. Golf. Hang out time. Sitting around fires telling stories. It all fits.

The decline of Christmas cards continues. I’m confident I’ve written on this subject before, but given the gradual reduction in Christmas card mailings, it’s worth noting this change in our national character.
 
We no longer stay in touch through the written word. We don’t use mail. We don’t take time to put pen to paper and write something down to share with friends and family during the end-of-the-year holiday season.
 
If I did write about this topic last year, I would have pointed out that at the peak for my wife and I, we received 88 holiday greeting cards. I couldn’t pinpoint the peak year. A fairly good guess would put that sometime between 2005-2010.
 
Our basket overflowed with pictures, notes, and massive explanations that probably included Aunt Betsy’s petunia garden and exotic vacations. Things that you probably didn’t care about.

Maybe that has fueled the reduction in people sending greetings this time of year: they don’t feel they have much to say. Or they feel what they said the year before is pretty much what they’ll say this year.

Or they’ve gotten bored with sending cards. Or they think you might be bored with the annual update. Or they don’t care. Or other forms of communications have supplanted the mailed expression of caring.
 
You can go on and on regarding what’s caused this change. Social media, certainly, plays a part. Large numbers of people put a family greeting on their most used social media site, so you can get the family update there. That’s cool. Nice to see the picture and read up a bit.
 
The world has changed. Snail mail is still fun to get, but not many people send something, so you must milk your joy from the technology others choose to use for transmission.

I must say I miss some of it. Back in the day, returning to our parents’ home for the holidays, I always looked forward to perusing who had sent cards, what they had to say, and whether recent photos were included. Our family moved several times, so those cards were an opportunity to stay in touch, see how those friends and relatives were doing. It was like you came home literally and figuratively to catch up.
 
There is an element of “losing a tradition” as the number of cards coming to our house has gone down and down, to 11 last year and eight this year. I don’t know if some of those friends have passed away. I don’t know if they’ve moved. They may have gotten married or divorced, who knows?

I’m guilty. I only respond now to those friends who continue to send us greetings (unless they are direct family or live nearby, and then I don’t ever send a card; I figure we’ve either seen those people recently or will see them soon, so we can update them live).
 
I’m nostalgic for those cards, opening the mailbox and seeing three or four personally addressed envelopes with our name on them, knowing I’ve shared something with each of them, and they are staying in touch.
 
We will move on. Our card tally may drop again next year. We will stay in touch to the best of our ability. And, the tradition slowly eases its way out of our lives.