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Ever feel so thirsty that when you finally got a drink you thought you might drown yourself?

Ever want something so bad you felt physically thirsty for it, even though what you wanted wasn’t a drink but a thing, or a person, or an experience?

* * * * *

I’m not sure why it always goes downhill
Why broken cisterns never could stay filled
I’ve spent ten years singing gravity away
But the water keeps on falling from the sky

And here tonight while the stars are blacking out
With every hope and dream I’ve ever had in doubt
I’ve spent ten years trying to sing these doubts away
But the water keeps on falling from my eyes

(from Jon Foreman’s song, “A Cure for the Pain”)

* * * * *

Whenever my son Sammy (18 months old) wakes up in the morning, there are two things he wants: the first is his mom. So we take a quick trip into the bedroom for him to get a few cuddles. But pretty soon he realizes he hasn’t had his second thing.

A drink.

So I take him out to the kitchen and give him some milk in a little cup. He drinks and drinks and drinks until he absolutely has to stop to take a breath. He gasps for air, his cheeks red, his eyes watering from the coldness. Then he takes another long draught of milk. And another.

This is what it is to be thirsty.

* * * * *

I think I live my life being thirsty for stuff. And when I get it I drink it, and it tastes so good going down. There’s that initial gulping, that insatiable swallowing that wants to consume the world. But then the thirst is gone, and I’m left holding the bottle. Or the credit card bill. Or the emptiness.

Drinking stuff always leads to this amazing satisfaction, followed by a subtle emptiness.

* * * * *

“Everyone who drinks this [physical] water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

See you next year. In the mean time, enjoy the best and worst (mostly worst) of 2010:

“I am on the toilet thinking about writing a third book.” – former baseball player, Jose Canseco

”It is not a sweatshop. You go in this place and it’s a factory but, my gosh, they’ve got restaurants and movie theaters and hospitals and swimming pools. For a factory, it’s pretty nice.” – Steve Jobs

“Its a official dat i am leavin skool and enterin draft. … i aint doin anotha yr.” – Oklahoma point guard Tommy Mason-Griffin declaring his career choice via Facebook (via ESPN)

“The internet’s completely over. … The internet’s like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you.” – Prince

“I hear comments sometimes that large oil companies are greedy companies or don’t care, but that is not the case with BP. We care about the small people.” – BP Chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg

“Few children of famous people succeed. Most of them are little shits.” — Jamie Oliver, TV chef

“A lot of people say, ‘I would rather have a heart attack at the height of sexual passion’. I think I would prefer to be killed by a bookcase.” — Tom Stoppard

“I thought it was gum.” — Paris Hilton, denying responsibility for packet of cocaine Las Vegas police found in her bag.

“I didn’t have the balls. This is not my thing.” — Christian Hernandez, 22-year-old Mexican matador arrested for breach of contract when he dropped his cape and fled from a bull midfight.

“Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model.” — Robert Hintze, founder of dating site BeautifulPeople.com, which dropped 5,000 members who appeared in photos to have gained weight over the holidays.

“I need a vacation spot for my lice…Beards: Uggs for your face.” – Bryan Allain

I learned that it takes precisely 6.5 weeks to be able to laugh about a bombed performance in front of 13,000 people. – Tyler Stanton

So what great 2010 quotes by celebrities, athletes, bloggers or your best friends did I miss?

Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they’ve got a second. ~William James

I know that a lot of you out there have had a rough year.

Some might even say an overwhelmingly, unbelievably, inconceivably shitty year. I have friends who lost a spouse this year, or a parent. Some of my friends have spent the holidays in a hospital, or a hospice, trying to “celebrate” while some of the people they love the most in the whole world fight for their lives, or slowly begin drifting away. Others of you continue dealing with chronic pain or some sort of disease or watch someone close to you go through it.

I know that, for some of you, 2010 was the worst year you could ever imagine. And nothing that any two-bit blogger like myself can write will change that. But if I can offer one message of encouragement, I would say this:

Hang in there.

Why?

Because a lot can change in a year.

* * * * *

One year ago we left some of the closest friends we had ever made, and a church we loved, to move into my parent’s basement with our four kids. It felt like we had hit rock bottom financially and, many days, emotionally. I felt like the previous 15 years had been totally wasted. I felt like a 34 year old graduating from college, except I had five mouths to feed and two minivans.

If rock bottom doesn’t involve owning two minivans, then I don’t know rock bottom.

On a more serious note, I didn’t think I had much to offer the world.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying these problems are on par with watching someone you love pass away, or some of the other tragedies you folks faced in 2010, or waking up every morning in physical pain. But it was pretty depressing, hopeless, and felt like a big fat dead end.

One year later my life does not even closely resemble the one I was living a year ago. We have our own place, a beautiful little place in the country. I’ve been blessed with four intriguing book projects and seven months of writing income lined up (last December I had about two, and as recent as a month ago we had $13.75 to our name). In the marathon of my life I’m only on step 11 or 12, but I finally feel like I’m moving in the right direction.

Whatever 2010 has held for you, don’t give up. Believe me – you have no idea how much better things will be in twelve months time.

To change one’s life:  Start immediately.  Do it flamboyantly.  No exceptions. ~William James

A few years ago my dad and I had this argument.

“I don’t think people should make New Year’s resolutions,” he said.

“What!” I exclaimed. “But you’re a pastor! You’re supposed to be all about people trying to make new starts in life, turning over a new leaf. You know, all that redemption and rebirth crap.”

“New Year’s resolutions never work for me,” he said. “I think they’re pointless, so I don’t make them any more.”

I couldn’t believe it. My life was based around two months of angelic living, followed by a ten month unraveling of every good habit I ever started. If I didn’t make New Year’s resolutions, when would I ever do anything good?

Never.

* * * * *

As usual, I’m starting to see that my dad might be right (shhh, don’t tell him). But it’s true – how many New Year’s resolutions actually make it out of the winter, much less see the light of spring or the heat of summer? Perhaps this is the true reason that autumn is my favorite season – every year, by the time fall rolls around, I’ve managed to shed the fetters of all my New Year’s resolutions and have gone back to being, well, plain old unpolished me.

But what do we expect? We set ourselves up to fail. We resolve to eat better or drink less alcohol, but no sooner have we shouted “Happy New Year!” at our friend’s New Year’s Eve party than we are back at the food table eating those chocolate nut things and chugging champagne by the plastic cup-full. I know one of my favorites (resolving to get up earlier so that I can be more productive) is always thrown off course the very first morning of the year, when I get home at 2am, my alarm goes off at 6am, and I hit snooze eight times.

The very act of bringing in the New Year thwarts 93% of all New Year’s resolutions.

* * * * *

But I think the main reason most New Year’s resolutions bite the dust is our inadequate response to failure. We set out with this clean slate, and once we screw up once we throw in the towel. Everyone wants a perfect record. No one wants to spend the entire year fighting for positive change – we want it all to come so easily. And when it doesn’t, well, you know, the path of least resistance and all that.

The really good changes, like exercising or losing weight or treating yourself in a kinder way, never exist with 100% success. You will mess up. So unless you’re cool with that, and plan on persevering even after the first set back, then don’t bother making the resolution.

That’s why this year I’m turning the table. I’m making only two resolutions: the first is to smoke the pipe I got for Christmas from my brother-in-law on a regular basis. I figure that it’s not the worst vice someone could have, and since I always fail at New Year’s resolutions anyway, this means I won’t smoke at all. While this is disappointing, I’d rather be disappointed by failing to perform a vice than failing to perform a virtue.

Still with me?

I’ve made only one other resolution: this year, my resolution is not to make any New Year’s resolutions.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Some people hate it. Some people love it. Some people move just to avoid it. Some people vacation in it.

That’s right. We’re talking about snow.The wonderful white stuff that I love to see in December and, by the end of February, usually loathe.

These are my favorite things to do in it (well, the first four are – the last one is sort of an end-of-February snowy activity):

1) Snowball fights – there are fewer things more fun than spending an entire day building a couple of snow forts, and then using a 15 minute snowball battle to tear them both to the ground

2) Drive in it – As a married parent of four, I don’t get to experience very much life-threatening excitement. Skydiving, swimming with sharks, going on vacations with Bear Grylls…they all seem like things to do after the kids are in college. The only excitement left for me is to drive into a snow drift at 55 mph and try to control the fish tailing.

3) Eat it – When I was a kid, grandma used to have us go out and get a bowl full of snow, mix in sugar and vanilla flavoring and !presto! a delicious bowl of snow. I recently tried it with the kids. They took one bite and threw their bowls back outside. I tried a bite and had to agree.

4) Sled on it – the Chevy Chase sledding scene from Christmas Vacation is the best sledding scene in the history of movie making.

5) Watch it melt…and see spring come gushing up through it.

So help me fill out the list. What do you like to do with snow?

Only one week to go and we’ll have gone a year without television. Well, not a very strict year: we still caught a few movies on DVD, and I did sneak a few World Cup games at my in-laws in the summer. And then there’s our Sunday afternoon dinners at my parents, where the NFL is always on…

But all in all, we pretty much went without it. Apparently, if I’m an average television watcher, that means:

1) I saved approximately 11oo hours of my life. But I know I spent about 200 extra hours on the internet, and another 250 or so blogging. And another 100 reading blogs, something I didn’t do before giving up television. So the net gain was about 550 hours.

2) I lived a safer life. Falling flatscreens kill, you know.

3) I should have lost some weight. Obesity has been proven to be directly proportional to the hours of television someone watches. In fact, I am hovering at approximately the same weight as at the end of 2009.

4) I missed out on the Lost finale, fifteen Survivor finales, 727 Italian dives during the World Cup, and a host of other reality shows too ridiculous to mention.

5) I have no idea what ended up happening to poor Conan, or whether or not Paula Abdul still hosts American Idol.

Lots of folks have been asking, What now? Are you going to watch television in 2011?

I am.

Maile’s not convinced. But I’m definitely roping her into my trek through all 17 seasons of Lost, starting the night of January 1st. That is, if Bryan is still willing to let me borrow them.

So help me ease my way back into the world of the boob tube: what television events or programs will you be sure not to miss in 2011?