Merry? Christmas

Ok, it’s been over a week.

“So, why haven’t you posted for so long?”

Frankly, the momentum ground to a halt, the idea fountain dried up and the motivation fucked off somewhere sunny. It’s not been a very good week.

(At the risk of sounding slightly melodramatic.) My flu escalated into a life threatening super bug or something of the like (yeh, I HAD MAN FLU) and I consequently spent a lot of the past week in bed with a sore throat, high temperature and distinct lack of sympathy. It’s hard to be me, lol

Pretty much every activity regarding communication was put to one side. I, unintentionally, stopped talking to people online, stopped talking to people at home and wallowed in my misery. It seems that at (and in the majority of) times I can be rather pathetic with regards to my outlook. And man flu really doesn’t help.

So Christmas cards didn’t get written, neither did various letters. Revision wasn’t done to the planned degree, pre-Christmas tidying was forgotten, good will was postponed and festive cheer was shoved straight back up the backsides of any and all carol singers within a five mile radius.

I had (have?) become a scrooge, and I am deeply ashamed to admit it. This Christmas, for me, has seemed like the end product of years of downward spiraling at Christmas. I seem to have lost sight of the Christmas magic and cannot, for the life of me, enjoy it as much as I did when I was young.

Christmas used to be such a magical time. The month before-hand would effectively be a free month at school with nothing more grueling than sticking a Christmas tree to a card (which always annoys me – I have no artistic ability whatsoever) labeled “Hapy chrismas mumy and dadddy” (my spelling’s still dodgy) in scrawny handwriting (most probably the same handwriting I use today – it’s appalling!) And of course Christmas cards were still novelties at this point, writing them was fun and exhilarating (I perhaps exaggerate.) Christmas presents for your dearest friends were paid for by your parents and a present costing more than £5 was unheard of. Santa still existed and Mummy and Daddy sent off your letters to him yearly.

And then eventually the decline begins. Now the following could happen in any order but here’s how it went for me;

1. The evil epiphany – Santa does not exist. Now my personal reaction to this was both ridiculous and pathetic. I cried and told my parents they were lying. I proceeded to phone my grandparents who I established were also lying. Eventually the evidence became overwhelming, I accepted the truth. But for me it wasn’t just about Santa. The issue was that my parents, those who I should trust and love above all others (except god if you’re a bible-basher) had not only lied to me, but indoctrinated me into a false belief. If they had lied about Santa then what else had they lied to me about? Paranoia is a horrible thing.
2. Christmas loses its sparkle. There’s still magic (kind of) but Christmas just isn’t the same. Suddenly you noticed how stressed your parents are and eventually it wears off on you. At this point I also became quite angry. Angry with my parents for telling me the truth – because the fantasy was so much better. Angry with my parents for lying to me. Angry with my parents for lying to my younger brothers (both of whom were still believers.) Angry with my parents for not telling my younger brothers the truth (“If I had to know, why shouldn’t they?“) A five year age gap is insignificant in a ten-year-old’s mind. And even at times angry with my younger brothers for still finding Christmas magical. Now, surely you can see the beginnings of a very miserable bastard.
3. Christmas films/plays/carols start to bore you shitless. “It’s all a charade so what does it matter anyway?“
4. Christmas shortens. Now, this is a mixed blessing. Usually (I think) this comes around on entry to secondary school. Teachers, oddly enough, are no longer willing to give you December off and you don’t finish school until the 21st , if you’re lucky you may get a civvies day on the last. The flip side to the shortened coin is that you no longer have to endure the Christmas spirit for as long. However with so little break before the 25th it’s often far too easy to let Christmas pass you by without ever really reveling in it. The event you’ve been planning (or more importantly paying!) for since November has just passed and you didn’t particularly enjoy it. Bugger!
5. You stop planning and paying. This is the stage which I very nearly set foot onto this year. This year I left everything until the last minute. I bought essential presents for when they had to be bought and I wrapped them the night before they were to be given. (I wrapped all of my presents for the family at about 3am on Christmas morning!) No pre-meditation on how they were to be wrapped, no significance in the colour of ribbon, just cold, precise, effective wrapping.

And then it struck me – could it be that the thinking of such details is what gives us Christmas spirit? (along with adequate amounts of stress.) And is Christmas spirit (for adults) therefore simply relief? Relief, but in the context of a wintry gift-giving, song-singing, sherry-drinking festival. For children “Christmas spirit” is a mix between excitement and anticipation, but at any other time of the year we’d called that excitement and anticipation.

And there we have it – the essence of Christmas,

marketing!

I apologise for my scrooge-like ways. I shall endeavor to write again soon and attempt to redeem myself my writing something which portrays me in a relatively human light!

Procrastination does not make a good friend.

Well, firstly allow me to apologise for the 2 days in between this and the previous post. Now, I could say that I’ve been mightily busy or over-worked etc. Whereas, the truth is that I hadn’t a clue what I was going to write in my next post so I put it off. Convincing myself that this would just be a week-nights weblog and that nobody would read it regardless of when I wrote the next entry. To a certain extent I was right.

Procrastination: the deferment or avoidance of an action or task to a later time and is often linked to perfectionism.
(I must state at this point that procrastination in my case is more due to laziness than perfectionism! And also that finding relevant images for procrastination is near impossible.)

There are times in our lives when the inevitable and the desirable are worlds apart. Times when we would give anything to be somewhere else, doing something different. And occasionally during these times we manage to get our own way. We fake illness, we run away, or (more commonly) we simply put off the undesirable until later.

This, unfortunately, is common in my life. I tend to lack motivation for anything that does not enthrall me or benefit me directly and instantly. I am, in this respect, very much like a chinchilla. I lack foresight and have excess cheek space. I find it hard to sit down and do something, for example, if the deadline is weeks, or even days, away. With college work I guess that some putting-off is inevitable and normal. But In my case the things I do instead of work are frankly pathetic.

History essay on the topic of “The Role Of The Girondins In The French Revolution” vs. Gears Of War on Xbox 360. Now, if I were a committed student there would be no choice, but alas I am not. Not only am I lacking motivation, but my choice of replacement activity has absolutely no utility whatsoever! So is there a difference between putting-off work do do something worthwhile (by which I am not referring to Xbox) and putting off work for the simple reason of not wanting to do work?

Yes. Procrastination for procrastination’s sake (or for the sake of anything less worthwhile than the original task) is laziness. Putting off a history assignment to save the lives of orphans in a developing country, for example, is less procrastinating, and more prioritising for the greater good. So I have now found my excuse to put off doing things I don’t want (or am simply too idle) to do. I’m doing something for the greater good.

Unfortunately this is the heart of my problem. Instead of cracking on with the task in hand I spend more thinking up excuses and justifying it to myself. It wasn’t uncommon for me in my earlier years of high school to not do a piece of homework, but then spend hours that evening thinking of a waterproof excuse to give the teacher for not having done it. Estimated time doing work would take – 30 minutes. Time taken thinking about work having not done it – 2 hours. And even though the numbers didn’t add up eventually this became routine. I’m now so practiced at convincing myself that things can wait that I, at times, find it impossible to motivate myself.

And would you look at that, I’ve entered a loop! The more I procrastinate the more it becomes acceptable. The more acceptable it becomes the more I procrastinate! So how do I break the loop? That’s not a rhetorical question, I genuinely don’t know.

Having read all of that through I’ve realised that I haven’t really made a point, and I haven’t even made it interesting. I guess for me the fact that I actually wrote anything is significant. I tend to set up this sort of account, write one post then leave it alone for…well, forever.

So I’m sorry this is a crap post. I shall endeavor to have some interesting thoughts tomorrow. And I shall try to write every evening this week! Possibly with the exception of Thursday which will be the last day of school. (ok, that was added on Thursday evening – really not in a writing frame of mind. Sorry!)

Sorry again!