On finishing a jar of pickles:

 On finishing a jar of pickles:

Every once in a while I add a jar of pickles to my shopping cart. At first, I eat them with my lunch regularly. Then I start to forget about the pickles. They slide to the back of the fridge and I don't grab one with my lunch. The last few dwindle down slowly until there are just two or three left. Then they wait. One of two things happen, either they get lost and forgotten, and on some day far in the future when I'm on a cleaning spree I toss out all that which has been left behind in the fridge, or I rediscover them while they're still good. If I find them again soon enough, they're consumed again with lunch in one last effort to finish the jar.

One such jar of pickles was finished today. It's not something one normally considers an accomplishment. In fact, the effort it takes to clean, and thus toss out old pickle jars unfinished, may be a more laudable goal. However, it's a rare enough occurrence that to actually finish a jar warrants some contemplation. It is reaching the end of things. But things don't ever end. Life isn't a jar of pickles. It just keeps going. So small things come and go within it, sometimes they reach the state of "done" or sometimes they just get left behind as we move on to new things. Eventually, a new jar of pickles gets added to the shopping cart, and the process starts all over again.

This blog is just a place to write things for myself. I hope to use it to contemplate things that interest me, which is a far-ranging list of topics. Why start now? It's a new year, so it's a time for new beginnings. I have things I want to say and want people to hear my voice, and might as well start now as opposed to tomorrow. I have time to start at the moment, and who knows when that will come again. I finished a jar of pickles with my lunch, so it's time to start on something else.

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