I'm writing this at the risk of sounding like Grinch. But this year, I declare 2025 holiday season as mine. And accordingly, I have written a list of rules for me to live by.
1. I will not participate in a 'family' event that is bound to bring only displeasure, hurt, tension and stress.
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As I type this I am preparing for vacation. Writing has pretty much taken a backseat to the planning of what to pack, what will be wanted/needed, what might be best to take with us in order to save a bit of money, what is too much to pack. The tendency is to try to pack for every eventuality.
The reality is that I can pack every single thing I think I might need (also known as overpacking) but I will be very irritable upon arrival and equally irritable when we pack up to leave. It's humping all that luggage and stuff about, you see, that really spoils the whole thing.
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What I'm sharing today is stuff of a sensitive nature. If like me you have learned things you'd sooner not have known, then please know that you are not alone.
When I was a child, I was exposed to things a child shouldn't have heard much less have seen. It removed an innocence that I wasn't prepared to lose, at a very early age. This exposure happened many times over the next several years.
I'm not very good at having fun. I am much more prone to think of things that might be fun and then clamp the door shut, lock it tight and force myself to do something 'productive'. Add to that my Martha complex of being certain that unless I do the necessary jobs about my home, no one else shall (and indeed there is no one else going to do them!). You can see how I bump hard on the ground the moment I think I'm going to take a day off or a bit of time to have 'fun'.
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I've been going back in time these days. Aka time travel which is rather nice as I can travel to past or future. It feels a lot like the Wonka factory elevator! I've been looking at the ways in which I played as a child. Part of that exploration is due to the Julia Cameron's book, The Artist's Way, which I'm currently making my way through. She'd asked the question a few weeks ago about childhood which led to the question of how we played.
I don't have a single photo from our day...I have a brand-new camera and I'll confess, aside from charging and putting in the batteries and SD card, the camera has gone back to the box. I confess I generally save my Christmas gifts, no matter how early they are given, for Christmas. My phone makes the most awful photos, so I don't use for general photography as a rule. Off subject all this talk of cameras, except that I wish I'd had the new camera with me today.
I don't know that I've mentioned it overmuch, but John's anxiety has increased to the point that he is very reluctant to leave home unless we are solidly in the middle of the rut we typically travel, which means we go to church and Katie's and pretty much nowhere else these days. I've talked to him about his anxiety and how it's affecting two of us and not just himself, but he steadily refuses to take medication. I have urged him to try the Vitamin B supplement our former doctor put me on when I was suffering with so much anxiety and panic attacks and I've noticed he's been taking it routinely this week, but will he do it next week? There's the real question. I sort of nagged him gently for the past week and we got out of the house.
I've just been making out my list of goals for this month (it's November 1 as I write this) and while I say I am not going to be sharing those goals. I did think I'd share some of my favorite things for November. I am not mentioning Thanksgiving on purpose. It is a favorite, but I feel it is a stand-alone for November, sort of the gateway into the whole holiday season, so you won't find me mentioning it here. I'm reserving those pleasures.
Here's what I'm going to be doing to make November a cozy and memorable month...
I've been thinking about Christmas quite a lot this year. It's hard not to think of the gifting part of the season when you are up...
