Christmas crunch

The crunch is on. I loathe the span of time between between December’s rent payment and the maybe/maybe not Christmas bonus. I always get in a funk this time of year. I start to feel inadequate from having viewed way too many asshole commercials telling me how white my shirts should be, how I should be spending every waking minute at the local mall, and baking cookies in my spare time. I start to miss the family I hardly ever hear from or worse, the ones who have departed this world for the next. On top of that, the folks I work with every day, think that the thing I should most want to do is to spend my personal time eating dinner with them and their spouse and hearing about this year’s vineyard profits and next year’s vacation plans. No thanks. Every year I tell myself, next year I’m going to start early and plan and save and not let this happen again. But I always fail. When I was a kid Christmas was always magical and no matter how hard my mom struggled as a single parent we always had a tree and gifts and I was always grateful for family and always got way more than I expected. But somewhere between puberty and middle-age the magic seems to have slipped out of my grasp. I can’t seem to find the special, from-the-heart words to write in the Christmas cards, can’t afford the gifts I’d like to get my dearest loved ones and it just makes me want to crawl under the covers and cry.

But next year it will be different, I will be better. I have made calendar entries for every month of the year as follows:

Jan - Christmas lists done - gifts/cards lists prepared for next year
Feb - 10 months to Christmas
Mar - 9 months to Christmas
Arp - 8 months to Christmas - start saving
May - 7 months to Christmas - what are you doing about it?
Jun - 6 months to Christmas - get your ass in gear
Jul - Five months to Christmas - Get it together now to avoid mid-December depression
Aug - 4 months to Christmas - What are you waiting for?
Sept 15 - 100 days to Christmas
Sept 25 - Three months to Christmas - No bullshit now
Oct 10 - 75 days to Christmas
Oct 25 - Two months to Christmas - NOW!!
Nov - one month to Christmas - This is no joke!
Dec 10 - two weeks to Christmas eve - Can you fucking relax?

I’ll let you know how it goes this time next year.