Author Archives: Andrej Zivor

Chores and Responsibility

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Any time I think of the chores that need done around my own household, my mind wanders back to a time when I was young, had no true responsibilities or jobs, and only had to do a few chores a week for my parents. Sometimes I get caught up in wishing that was my life again because of the freedom and lack of care in the world. But then I realize I wouldn’t truly have the “freedom” I now have to do anything I’d like whenever I like.

Still, it’s a point in my life worth missing with how little I had to do. School was easy. My home life was great. And I had a lot of free time to do whatever I wanted. I sometimes wish I still could explore my options in my free time now, but things are a little more rigid when you’re an adult.

Chores, though, gave me character. And there were a few in particular that I think instilled a sense of ownership and responsibility in me more than other chores ever could have. Those chores? Well, read on.

Picking up the house.

This was likely the most common chore I carried out and one that the house needed the most on a daily basis. I got pretty good about carrying a few cardboard boxes around the house with me to pick up loose items and clothes. This helped me to save trips walking from one room to the other putting things in their rightful places. Of course, if you wanted to use something else besides cardboard boxes, plastic totes would suffice. We just didn’t happen to have any.

Mowing.

What better way to give a teen responsibility than trusting them to run power equipment? Obviously this is something that I was taught to be extra careful with, even if it was a riding mower. We never had hills on our property, so it was as safe as could be when mowing. Still, it sort of made me feel more like an adult every time I cut the lawn.

Washing dishes.

Working as a dishwasher when I was 16 kind of ruined doing dishes at home as a chore when I was younger, if only because I felt like my life was consumed with dishes. So, I learned the art of compromise and would often trade my brother chores in order to get out of washing dishes. That typically meant I would end up sweeping the house, but if it meant not doing dishes, I was all for it.

Does Anyone Truly Like Wrapping Gifts?

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Wrapping gifts is one of those tasks that everyone sort of knows how to do, yet only a few truly enjoy the process. I mean, even if you went around and asked everyone you knew if they enjoyed wrapping gifts, the majority may say they like it, but their answer is always tied to liking it because they like giving gifts. Conflating the two usually means they wouldn’t just go out of their way to wrap gifts for fun unless there was a gift inside, meaning that enjoying the process is typically dependent on giving the gift.

And trust me, I’m one of those people who will flat out tell you that I’m not a fan of wrapping gifts. In fact, my partner and I decided this year for the holidays that we would just go out on a mini shopping adventure together and get things we thought the home needed. And I put emphasis on the word need here, because we’re trying to cut back on our expenses of gifts and things that are considered extra.

Still, I understand that I’ll still be wrapping some gifts that we got for my parents and her parents this year. And so, the dreaded process still looms.

I have noticed, though, that wrapping things is so much easier when you’ve got quality packaging supplies. If you choose to skimp on the materials, however, you’ll be met with a poor attempt at wrapping simply because the tape doesn’t stick well or your scissors weren’t sharp enough to make a straight cut.

So, if I had any advice to impart on you about wrapping gifts, it’s to go out and get some top notch packaging supplies. It may seem like a decent amount of money spent only on wrapping, which can be discouraging, but if you think about how you’ll get years of use out of your supplies, the expenses almost seem negligible.

Make sure to get things you know you’ll use, though. If you end up picking out different colored sharpies and fancy scissors that cut a certain pattern, reevaluate if you’ll actually use them. There’s no point in having much else outside of strong, adhesive packaging tape, a solid black magic marker, sharp and reliable scissors, and the best boxes around. (Of course, the boxes can be grabbed up for free depending on where you look. Just be sure to say no to weak, old boxes that look like they’re falling apart.)

Holiday Traditions

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Every year on December 24th, I spend time doing absolutely nothing all day except eating and talking and watching movies with my parents, my partner, and my brother and his wife. It’s a tradition of ours to keep close to the core 6 and do nothing else but be in the presence of one another.

And when we get together for this day, it’s customary that we all prepare a dish or two of finger foods to munch on throughout the day. Oftentimes there’s a shrimp cocktail board, and we make sure to find the spiciest cocktail sauce around in order to get our horseradish dry heat kick. (It typically ends up devolving into a “Who can handle the most heat” contest between my dad, my brother, and me.)

Still, I’ve been excited thinking about what I may bring this year, especially now that my partner and I have gone plant based. While we’re sure to bring a few candy boxes along too, which are always traditional, they’re not something we actually made ourselves (though nonetheless, candy boxes are a great addition to finger food snacking).

I’m thinking some sort of dish like fresh homemade jalapeno poppers would do the trick. Considering we all like a little bit of heat in our food, it would be an upgrade from frozen jalapeno poppers that we used to have in years past. Or, now that I think about it, it could be fun to bring along one of our own little recipes that we recently found involving baby bok choy. If you’ve never sauteed some baby bok choy with soy and mirin, you have got to try it. The savory flavor with the bok choy’s fresh and pungent aroma is one of the best things I’ve ever had, and it’s ridiculously easy to prepare.

I think that traditions are meant to be updated from time to time. A tradition is just that because it’s always the same, but in my opinion, traditions should evolve a little bit along the way in order to keep it familiar, yet new and exciting.

No matter how you look at it, I would say my family has a pretty solid tradition set in place that won’t be going away any time soon. So many families put the emphasis on December 25th when it comes to the holidays, so it’s kinda nice that we all look forward to December 24th more than anything.

Growing & Learning During the Holidays

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This past weekend my fiancee and I had our first vegan Thanksgiving with both of our families at separate events. And I’m proud to say that it honestly went a lot better than expected on multiple accounts.

To start, our families were both quite supportive, though we did catch a bit of flak here and there from certain family members that we wanted to avoid conversation with altogether. Nonetheless, it could’ve been a lot worse or annoying, so that was great. But we also were able to completely fill our plates and get multiple helpings of food, so there was no shortage of legit Thanksgiving comfort food made vegan by either us or our moms. I think that was the most surprising part: that we had so much good food to eat and it didn’t feel like we missed out on taste or being full enough (like many people think happens).

So, this already gives me hope for our trips home for Christmas. There’s always cardboard boxes filled with gifts to make us excited for going back home during the winter holidays, but it’s great that our dinners with family will continue to be great for them and great for us without missing out on anything good. (Though I must say that those very cardboard boxes disguised as colorful wrapping are my favorite still, even though I’m no longer a kid.)

This is encouraging not only for us and our future holidays with family, but it’s also great for our families to see that we’re just the same old people hanging out with the same old family and doing the same old traditions. I feel like some people let things that are new or different than them scare them into not wanting that thing around them. But if they just learned to embrace those things or at least the people who like/do those things, everything would be fine.

So, I just wanted to share how great it felt to go forward with something new but yet stay bold on our decision to do so. Sometimes when people go home to family, they compromise on some of their ideals or beliefs just to fit in with the family and not stir the pot. But sometimes bucking the system and traditions can be a very valuable thing for a family. Change is important to developing a relationship, and yet so many families remain unhappy because their relationships within the family didn’t evolve and grow for the better. And that growth was stunted because of a lack of change and new experiences.

The Subscription Craze

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Since the early 1900s, our culture has become incredibly engrossed with the entertainment industry. Both producers and businesses alike have capitalized on making big bucks off of entertainment, ranging from sports to film and live concerts and more. Of course, consumers eat this stuff up, as it’s a way to get away from the daily life and do something that they enjoy specifically. Thanks to everyone’s niche likely getting some love from entertainment in some capacity, you’ll never be left out no matter how weird or unique your hobbies are.

In this age, Netflix has completely overhauled what entertainment is like. Considering how huge film was not that long ago (and don’t get me wrong, it’s still big) and even how big of a fad video stores were for renting movies and episodes in a series, things have become drastically different in a sudden wink of an eye.

So, this has caused everyday people to have gained a huge amount of convenience in such a service. And boy does it show. People are much more likely to stay in and watch something on Netflix than actually go out to a film or rent something from a store (let alone buy anything new). Instead of buying expensive popcorn and candy boxes at the theatre, they’re much more likely to buy cheap popcorn and cheap candy boxes from the store to bring home for a binging marathon.

And this all happens from the comfort of your own home. Talk about Netflix absolutely hitting gold on a business model. What’s super great for consumers is how affordable a monthly subscription to Netflix is. They’ve priced their product so perfectly that people can’t help but talk about how cheap it is rather than how much of an inconvenience it is on their wallet. (Of course, people fail to include their monthly internet bill in the conversation when talking about Netflix despite that being 3 to 4 times as much.)

What’s quite telling is how this subscription model has taken over in other industries, too. People want the convenience of not leaving their home and not paying that much. And auto renewal payments just make the cycle even more simple, which is all the average consumer wants.

I’d say within a few years we can even start to expect things like craft beer subscriptions where something new comes to your house every month, giving you a wide array of options to try out and see what you like. This is just the nature of our society in this time.