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Bah, Humbug
Dec. 11th, 2011 10:00 pmThis is the time of year which manages to press all my angst buttons repeatedly. For the record, I'm not a fan of xmas.
My workload in December more than doubles because many office colleagues going to be pushing to finish projects before the end of the calendar year. Worse, I know everyone of them won't be in the office the last two weeks of the month having vanished for the holidays & traveling to warm places around the globe. (These will be the same people who are resentful when they return and find the long list if tasks they left stuck to the fridge on their way out aren't finished because many others were gone at the same time.)
All of this I could handle.
December and the end of the calendar year is a surprise to all of them every year. It's like they wake up out of a post-double latte coma with 334 days of the year gone and panic about getting it all done in the last 31. A little planning would help, but hey, that's just crazy talk.
This too I can handle. I'm paid to deal with this stuff so I bitch about it on social media ('cuz it's cheaper than therapy) and plow on through my to-do list. I'll pretend it's nice to feel wanted, suck it up and do it.
The part I can't get cheery about though is xmas itself. The annual paper cut of the soul used to begin in early December, then US Thanksgiving, then Halloween, then Canadian Thanksgiving and soon it will start on July 4. In another 10 years, xmas will be like the US election cycle: it begins the day after the prior one ends. And people will wonder why I'm bitter 24x7 instead of just waking hours.
Today has been the most exhausting day I've had in weeks. My heavy, soul-crushing burden? Shopping. Not even in a mall, just online shopping.
I hate shopping. I hate spending money. I hate guessing what people might like/want. I hate dedicating enormous amounts of my brain to remembering what I gave in prior years, examining, comparing & remembering candidate presents this year, panicking about getting things shipped in time, becoming disappointed vendors are out of stock and so on.
Don't bother suggesting I just bake cookies or send homemade crafts. Just don't. Most of my clan lives in Canada... have you tried getting cookies shipped across the border? There are 100,000 bureaucrats and trigger-happy homeland security people on both sides of the border who have made it their lives' work to stop this from happening with small-scale weapons and complaints to the World Trade Organization, the EPA, Environment Canada, Revenue Canada and a bunch of agencies you don't want to know about. Cookies = Guantanamo, and I'm too fair-skinned to deal with the tropical sun.
Despite the best efforts of the universe and my aversion to this seasonal wretchedness, I did manage to order presents online for five nieces; I should be able to get the nephew's present ordered tomorrow by phone during business hours.
Which just leaves the impossible present: something for the parents. Seriously, what do you get for the people who already have hoarding issues? Hell, getting them anything is like giving a crack pipe to an addict.
Maybe I'll send them cookies. Or just say I did and claim some gov't somewhere stopped them. It's not like I'm swearing to anything with my hand on the bible.
The part which truly has me soaking in a particularly unsoothing bubble-bath of despair is the sad realization that I ll have to do this all over again next year, possibly as soon as Labor Day. It'll never end. I mean, you can only fake your own death so many times before folks start to get a teensy bit suspicious.
My workload in December more than doubles because many office colleagues going to be pushing to finish projects before the end of the calendar year. Worse, I know everyone of them won't be in the office the last two weeks of the month having vanished for the holidays & traveling to warm places around the globe. (These will be the same people who are resentful when they return and find the long list if tasks they left stuck to the fridge on their way out aren't finished because many others were gone at the same time.)
All of this I could handle.
December and the end of the calendar year is a surprise to all of them every year. It's like they wake up out of a post-double latte coma with 334 days of the year gone and panic about getting it all done in the last 31. A little planning would help, but hey, that's just crazy talk.
This too I can handle. I'm paid to deal with this stuff so I bitch about it on social media ('cuz it's cheaper than therapy) and plow on through my to-do list. I'll pretend it's nice to feel wanted, suck it up and do it.
The part I can't get cheery about though is xmas itself. The annual paper cut of the soul used to begin in early December, then US Thanksgiving, then Halloween, then Canadian Thanksgiving and soon it will start on July 4. In another 10 years, xmas will be like the US election cycle: it begins the day after the prior one ends. And people will wonder why I'm bitter 24x7 instead of just waking hours.
Today has been the most exhausting day I've had in weeks. My heavy, soul-crushing burden? Shopping. Not even in a mall, just online shopping.
I hate shopping. I hate spending money. I hate guessing what people might like/want. I hate dedicating enormous amounts of my brain to remembering what I gave in prior years, examining, comparing & remembering candidate presents this year, panicking about getting things shipped in time, becoming disappointed vendors are out of stock and so on.
Don't bother suggesting I just bake cookies or send homemade crafts. Just don't. Most of my clan lives in Canada... have you tried getting cookies shipped across the border? There are 100,000 bureaucrats and trigger-happy homeland security people on both sides of the border who have made it their lives' work to stop this from happening with small-scale weapons and complaints to the World Trade Organization, the EPA, Environment Canada, Revenue Canada and a bunch of agencies you don't want to know about. Cookies = Guantanamo, and I'm too fair-skinned to deal with the tropical sun.
Despite the best efforts of the universe and my aversion to this seasonal wretchedness, I did manage to order presents online for five nieces; I should be able to get the nephew's present ordered tomorrow by phone during business hours.
Which just leaves the impossible present: something for the parents. Seriously, what do you get for the people who already have hoarding issues? Hell, getting them anything is like giving a crack pipe to an addict.
Maybe I'll send them cookies. Or just say I did and claim some gov't somewhere stopped them. It's not like I'm swearing to anything with my hand on the bible.
The part which truly has me soaking in a particularly unsoothing bubble-bath of despair is the sad realization that I ll have to do this all over again next year, possibly as soon as Labor Day. It'll never end. I mean, you can only fake your own death so many times before folks start to get a teensy bit suspicious.
