Observations

I’ve tried them all.

Strawberry. Raspberry. Blackberry. Artisan berry blends that cost more than a dumbbell.

And I keep coming back to the same thing.

Grape jelly.

Not jam. Not preserves.

Jelly.

Gelatinous. Purple. Perfect.

Every time I tell myself I’m going to “upgrade,” I end up right back where I started—slathering it onto peanut-buttered bread I’m going to devour in five seconds flat.

And here’s the thing.

This isn’t about jelly.

It’s about how often we overthink things that already work.

We convince ourselves that newer must be better. That complicated must be superior. That if it doesn’t feel sophisticated, it doesn’t count.

But most of the time?

The original slaps the hardest. The tried and true wins.

You see this everywhere with building your body.

New things come along constantly—and just as constantly, they fizzle out a couple years later.

But the unsexy old bricks still work best:

Lift weights.

Do your cardio.

Eat protein, fiber, and healthy fats.

Sleep 7–9 hours.

Supplement if you need it.

Forget flashy. Forget trends.

Go with what actually works…like grape jelly.

Now if you’ll excuse, I’ve got a sandwich to inhale.

Late December.

Lights bright. Music steady. A couple of familiar faces. Everyone moving like they belong there, like the place has muscle memory of its own.

Then the calendar flips. January hits.

Brace yourself. Here come the New Year’s Resolutioners.

Overnight the sanctuary becomes a theme park. The quiet clank of plates gets drowned out by motivational podcasts playing out loud, someone supersetting five machines like they’re trying to beat a high score, and a small tribe gathered around the dumbbells Googling “how to lose belly fat fast” between sets.

I don’t hate them. Not really. They arrive full of hope, wearing brand-new shoes that still squeak on the rubber floor, eyes wide like they just stepped into a monastery made of mirrors.

I’ve watched this migration for years. It crests in early January, peaks somewhere between treadmill and protein powder fatigue, then fades like fireworks smoke in cold air.

By February the crowds thin. The dumbbells find their homes again. The gym exhales. The iron remembers who actually lives here.

That’s the funny part about resolutions. They announce themselves. They arrive with banners and promises and neon-colored water bottles.

Consistency doesn’t.

Consistency is the guy wiping down the bench after tough sets on a Tuesday in March. The woman loading plates at 5:30 am in the middle of September. The quiet nods between people who never had to say they were serious.

So welcome, Resolutioners. Enjoy the chaos while it lasts. I’ll be right over here, doing what I was doing last month, and the month before that. And every month.

The gym doesn’t belong to the people who start loud.

It belongs to the ones who are still here when the resolutions hit the dust bin.

Here’s a question that hits everybody in the Midwest right in the frostbitten soul:

Why aren’t windshield wipers mounted like…two inches higher on the windshield?

Just two inches.

Not a revolution in engineering.

Not a redesign from the ground up.

Just…lift the damn things a little closer to the warm air blasting out of the defroster.

Because here’s a shared human experience:

You get in your car on a winter morning, fire it up, hit the wipers…

SCHKKKKKRRRRK.

Nothing.

Frozen.

Locked in ice like a prehistoric mosquito.

So you sit there, shivering, rubbing your hands together like you’re about to cast a spell, waiting for the air to warm up the glass and do its magic.

But the heat only reaches almost far enough.

Almost.

It shoots right above the wiper line—the exact area where the ice is holding your wipers hostage.

A cosmic joke.

A design flaw.

A test from the universe to see if you’re a patient man or a windshield-scraper berserker.

And every winter I’m sitting there thinking:

We’ve put men on the moon.

We’ve built computers that fit in our pockets.

We’ve created AI that can help us write blog posts about windshield wipers. 🤣

But we can’t give these wipers a little boost?

A two-inch promotion?

A raise in rank?

Is there a secret engineering reason? Aerodynamics? Manufacturing standards? Some ancient auto-industry tradition no one questions anymore?

Or is it one of those things everyone just accepts even though it makes zero sense—like neckties, or the fact that grocery carts always have one wheel possessed by demons?

All I know is this:

Every winter morning is a reminder that sometimes the world is built almost right…

And sometimes you have to ask the question nobody else is asking.

Raise the wipers. Raise the standards. Raise everything.

Even two inches can change your entire view.