Mailing It in for the Holidays

This year, I'm going to take part in a time-honored American holiday tradition that I've always wanted to try: I'm going to mail it in for the holidays. 

I plan to enjoy every second of it.  I'm going to slide by while doing as little as possible. Anything I can put off until January will get shoved to the side.  Anything that isn't urgent won't get done at all.  I'm coming in late, leaving early, and taking two-hour lunches. 

It's going to be wonderful.

The only problem with my otherwise-foolproof plan is that I can't actually do any of this at my real job.   I actually have stuff to do there--stuff that seems beyond my capacity even when I'm operating at 100 percent.

And right now I'm most certainly not. No American really is this time of year.  We don't get as much vacation time as the rest of the industrial world, so we're left going through the motions for the month of December to compensate.  And since I can't do it at my real job, you can bet your bottom dollar I'll be doing it right here.  Heck, I might not even finish this column.

The blog is going to redefine laziness over the next month.  I could post crappy stuff that I don't put any thought into, but even that sounds like too much effort. I might occasionally log in to check my page views, but I'm going to at least save my info so I don't have to re-type my login every time.

Why am I doing this, you ask? 

First, because it's the American way.  For all my loyal readers in Denmark, consider this a cultural education. 

Beyond that, I'm way behind in writing for my other websites, and people don't take much time to read blogs during a busy Christmas season anyway, so it seems like a good time to recharge for a renewed blogging push in January.  More importantly, posting old stuff makes it look like I'm still doing something when I'm actually not.

So what can you expect over the next month? 

Not very much!  I'll still post a blog every week in December, but rather than produce something mindless (even more mindless than usual, that is), I'm going to re-post some of my favorite stuff from the blog's earlier days.   

More of you are reading now (for reasons I'm happy about but have yet to entirely understand), so this seems like a good chance to re-introduce some old columns that never hit it big because they posted before their time.

I'll be back with an original post shortly before Christmas, but until then, enjoy a collection of my overlooked favorites, as well as a classic or two from this year.  I won't call it a "best-of" because, let's face it, all my stuff is crap.  After all, my best-read column of all-time, the only one that's ever truly gone viral, is about bugs gone wild.  

So, I realize that my stuff might be crap, but some it is crap that I'd like to share. 

And isn't that what the holidays are really all about? 

Other than a chance to be lazy, that is.