An interesting Christmas, to be sure. (listening to: Dave Matthews Band, "Where Are You Going?")
Ahhh... Christmas. How wonderful the time of year. Everything lightly dusted with a coat of freshly fallen snow, the streets also white with snow and ice, the windows of your room frosted with intricate patterns of frozen water spiderwebbing its way across the pane. Some might think that God himself paints the earth this way purposefully. Like the white page, the earth ready to be re-written in a new year, fresh with beginnings and possibility. With all this optimism around me, why do I feel so down?
Maybe it's many reasons. Maybe it's because my brother is home, and reminding me just how possible it is for one person to make an impact on their corner of the world. Something I've failed to do since being released from the safety net of college. Maybe it's because the holidays are a time for gathering together with loved ones, and family gatherings are filled with couples sharing the presence of each other in comfort and joy just to be together. Something I have yet to find. Maybe it's because something is trying to show me just how pointless it is to try and save money to start a new life, as everything around me breaks down, forcing me to dump more and more of the green into it just to stay afloat. Something I have yet to learn, or at least to put into practice.
Maybe it's a thousand of these reasons, and millions more that have yet to congeal themselves in my head. Overall, there is a very large sense of lonliness, inadequacy, and foolishness that all seem to add up to a very lonely holiday season. Fighting with friends, being unable to keep up even the closest friendships so I can look at something around me and be happy with it. TO be able to point to something... anything and say, "Look at what I've made. I'm proud of this." Lately my foot seems to find it's way into my mouth so often that I often wonder if I'm standing on my head.
The thing I've been told to cure the holiday blahs is to make a list of everything I'm thankful for, and give thanks that I have all those things. But every item on my laundry list seems to resonate more with things I don't have because of my foolishness than things I can take pride in. Living, as I do, day to day, I often feel like a duck on a pond. On the surface, everything looks calm. But below the surface, I'm paddling around furiously just to be able to breathe. I seek comfort where there is none, and the more I turn to things I have sought comfort in before, the more I find them falling away from me.
"I want to hold on to something that won't break away or fall apart; like the pieces of my heart."
Monday, December 27, 2004
Friday, December 17, 2004
When in Rome...
Well, I had no idea I was so popular. (listening to: Bob Marley, "No Woman, No Cry")
And so, my friends, my eager and waiting listeners, bask once again in the erudite ramblings of a lonely twenty-something, seeking meaning, purpose and truth from a blue state surrounded by the ever-baffling reds around us.
Where did we leave off? Oh, yes... the purpose of men in a rapidly-becoming matriarchal society. C.W.- I don't know if I believe that chivalry must conform to the standard that Mr. Christian-by-the-book has outlined in his blog, but I do honestly believe that men catering to women, showing them deference and respect should not be lost to the wind as we bow in all-seeing confirmation of your rule over us. Yes, you've become everything our grandfathers feared you would when your grandmothers realized that having boobs didn't mean they had to be them. And yes, I'm hoping that someday women will realize (convince themselves erroneously?) that they need men just as much as we need you. And I don't think I'm alone in that.
Despite the teaser in the first paragraph of today's post, I won't be delving into politics. I think enough has been said both through Television, and mass e-mail forwards (yes, I'm looking at you, FWD Freaks). Bush won. That sucks. Are we going to have to live with it? Yes. So. let's do what Europe has done, and all give the bumbling idiot a shot again. After all, we're stuck with him for four more years. Might as well learn to live with him.
What else is going on... OH! I've got it. Ok, Here's what I want to talk about in this post. (Finally... some direction. Thank God.) Christmas presents. What should we base our purchases on this Holiday season? I was driving home from the store (where I myself rang up over $3000 of Video Game related holiday chaff in a four hour period) listening to the radio, when two local DJ's started talking about this caller who was having a crisis. Turns out she had bought her boyfriend some really nice ($1,000) golf clubs for Christmas. Something he had wanted for a very long time. And when he found out, he went completely ape. He thought that since she made more money than he did, she was rubbing that in his face by buying him a gift he couldn't possibly compete with monetarily. Now.. wait just a damn minute, folks. Have we gotten so caught up in our pocketbooks that we assess HOW MUCH people are spending on us for Christmas gifts, and have to weasel our way into finding out the MSRP for each package under the tree so we stay even keel with those we love? Does this seem particularly wrong to anyone else? I've experienced it first hand. Friends balk at me when I spend a sizable amount on them for Christmas, saying it's too much. Where is that written? Is there some sort of website that I should be referencing, some sort of mathematical formula that will yield my appropriate budget for my Christmas gifts?
$$ = (months known friend) x (average hours spent a week in contact with friend) + (number of "no way I'll forget THAT" moments) / (times they've embarrassed you) - (times they've slept with your significant other)?
[PS- If any of you want to apply the above formula and let me know how much I should be spending on you, that'd be awesome.]
Help me out, folks, 'cause it makes no f'ing sense to me. Can't I buy somethign for someone I know they'd like, and not have to worry about how many times Lincoln's face crosses the counter in the process?? (He's on the Five Dollar bill, by the way)
And so, my friends, my eager and waiting listeners, bask once again in the erudite ramblings of a lonely twenty-something, seeking meaning, purpose and truth from a blue state surrounded by the ever-baffling reds around us.
Where did we leave off? Oh, yes... the purpose of men in a rapidly-becoming matriarchal society. C.W.- I don't know if I believe that chivalry must conform to the standard that Mr. Christian-by-the-book has outlined in his blog, but I do honestly believe that men catering to women, showing them deference and respect should not be lost to the wind as we bow in all-seeing confirmation of your rule over us. Yes, you've become everything our grandfathers feared you would when your grandmothers realized that having boobs didn't mean they had to be them. And yes, I'm hoping that someday women will realize (convince themselves erroneously?) that they need men just as much as we need you. And I don't think I'm alone in that.
Despite the teaser in the first paragraph of today's post, I won't be delving into politics. I think enough has been said both through Television, and mass e-mail forwards (yes, I'm looking at you, FWD Freaks). Bush won. That sucks. Are we going to have to live with it? Yes. So. let's do what Europe has done, and all give the bumbling idiot a shot again. After all, we're stuck with him for four more years. Might as well learn to live with him.
What else is going on... OH! I've got it. Ok, Here's what I want to talk about in this post. (Finally... some direction. Thank God.) Christmas presents. What should we base our purchases on this Holiday season? I was driving home from the store (where I myself rang up over $3000 of Video Game related holiday chaff in a four hour period) listening to the radio, when two local DJ's started talking about this caller who was having a crisis. Turns out she had bought her boyfriend some really nice ($1,000) golf clubs for Christmas. Something he had wanted for a very long time. And when he found out, he went completely ape. He thought that since she made more money than he did, she was rubbing that in his face by buying him a gift he couldn't possibly compete with monetarily. Now.. wait just a damn minute, folks. Have we gotten so caught up in our pocketbooks that we assess HOW MUCH people are spending on us for Christmas gifts, and have to weasel our way into finding out the MSRP for each package under the tree so we stay even keel with those we love? Does this seem particularly wrong to anyone else? I've experienced it first hand. Friends balk at me when I spend a sizable amount on them for Christmas, saying it's too much. Where is that written? Is there some sort of website that I should be referencing, some sort of mathematical formula that will yield my appropriate budget for my Christmas gifts?
$$ = (months known friend) x (average hours spent a week in contact with friend) + (number of "no way I'll forget THAT" moments) / (times they've embarrassed you) - (times they've slept with your significant other)?
[PS- If any of you want to apply the above formula and let me know how much I should be spending on you, that'd be awesome.]
Help me out, folks, 'cause it makes no f'ing sense to me. Can't I buy somethign for someone I know they'd like, and not have to worry about how many times Lincoln's face crosses the counter in the process?? (He's on the Five Dollar bill, by the way)
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