Jumpstart, Beer

Starr Hill Warm Up Winter Ale

Sometimes when it’s late on a Friday or Saturday night and the wife is asleep and Twitter is dull I find myself pondering beer like the good old days of my blogging origins. Each time I get a couple hundred words in and realize I haven’t said anything. This post is worthless. And I don’t even bother to save the Word Doc.

Tonight will in all likelihood be no different. Or will it?

A rerun of Elementary is playing on the iPad next to me on my desk as the clock on my iMac ticks over to read 12:27 AM. Earlier tonight I drank a Winter Ale called Warm Up by Starr Hill. The kind people at Starr Hill gave it to me along with another beer – a chocolate stout that I haven’t drank yet. Whenever I get these beers I feel obliged to think critically about them, like I used to do all the time when blogging about beer was a regular thing for me. I get excited about beer for a few minutes then, like starting up a car with a dying battery, you believe it’s going to work. It feels right; it makes the right sounds. You know though that the battery is dead. And as you keep trying to turn your key in the starter the noise slowly gets duller and duller with each attempt.

I often long for the night I sit here contemplating beer that instead of trying to start up a car with a dead battery that someone brought jumper cables to my rescue. Then I can drive my fictional beer blogging car over to Costco and get a new car battery after waiting in line for 25 minutes since no one ever mans the station at the auto/tire shop. Will it ever happen though? Who knows?

Maybe I don’t need jumper cables. That type of re-ignition might be too much to handle diving back into a topic I feel so lost in now.

– Josh

Is this thing on?

New stuff coming soon…

– Josh

PS: There’s new stuff everyday on shortonbeer.com.

Some Notes on Being Busy

It’s Saturday night. My energy is slowly fading. My mind keeps reminding me there’s soo much to do. I’ve been running around all day having myself a nice little Saturday. I finally sat down and started jotting some private notes down about my day like I usually do and noticed something was terribly wrong. I was complaining about how “busy” I was. Then I was reminded of a Tim Ferriss podcast episode about being busy. For the life of me I can’t remember what episode.

Basically the episode was asking why are we so busy and what are we busy doing. Are these things really necessary? I think it’s time to take a step back and ask, what am I busy doing and are all of them necessary?

I want to make sure that I’m enjoying all the “stuff” that’s making me busy. I don’t need to and will spare you the laundry list of things filling up my hours. Instead, I want you to do what I just did…

Open up a beer. I grabbed a Heavy Seas Smooth Sail Summer Ale.

Stop and sit down.

Realize everything is going to be okay even if we don’t get everything done.

Now it’s time to go do something we enjoy. I’m writing and putting my words out there for the world.

Then assess what we’re doing and if we really need to do them. Chances are we don’t. Make sure you want to do them, or don’t do them at all.

Kinda off topic but if you haven’t watched this dog video that’s gone pretty viral recently you should. Puts life and stuff in perspective.

That’s it for me for tonight. Time to go enjoy the rest of Saturday’s ticking clock with my wife and dog. And not stressing about being busy.

Cheers, everyone. Hope you have a great rest of the night and weekend!

 

Morphing

Before we get started – huge shout out to my buddy Bryan who published a post earlier this week about the costs and insight into barrel-aged beers. This is a fantastic read. If you are to read my post or his, read his. In fact if you haven’t read it yet go read his right now and come back to mine.

Here we go. Ugh. I hate this type of post. But it’s necessary. I don’t nearly hate this type of post as much as the posts where someone says, “my site has ran it’s course and it’s over, I’m leaving you and all the time you invested in me was for nothing.” Those are the worst. This is not that type of post.

This type of post is the one where someone says, “my blog is morphing into…yada yada yada.” That’s kind of what this post is. Kind of.

Grains of Sand

Last night was a relatively clear night as I walked Peyton across our neighborhood field. As I usually do I looked up at the sky, a nightly ritual I’ve come to look forward to on nights like this one. Staring up there reminds me of how infinitely tiny I am. I’m this inconceivably minute fraction of a grain of sand in this vast universe. Yet the only things that matter are the other pieces of sand and my experiences and relationships with them.

Sometimes certain sand grains can seem to sparkle brighter than others. Sometimes they are bigger than us. But they’re still sand. Maybe enough of us will stick together to create some sort of irritating rash on some galactic animal.

As grains of sand we can only do so much. So much good, evil, influence, etc. Sometimes we are in the right place at the right time to “make it.” When we make it we have to remember that anything and everything we do can, could and possibly should be analyzed and criticized. What should a piece of sand like this do? Be upset? Lash out? Fight back? I don’t think so. There is a place for sticking up for oneself and your beliefs. But the fact remains people will have opinions about you. And you know what? They might be right. Sometimes it’s best to just leave it alone. Maybe try to understand where they are coming from and make yourself into a better piece of sand.

Whatever happens we are grains of sand stuck together on a vast beach. The wind might blow and we’ll be swept away to a new part of the beach with new sandy friends (or foes). It doesn’t matter. Let’s just be sandy together and see where the wind takes us.

This post was written on my phone lying in bed late last night. I kept debating on whether or not to publish it and in my experience whenever I have to think this much about it then I should most definitely do it.