Christmas

 For Christmas, Shyam got me a little 5-year thought journal.  Just something to play with.  A subject a day to write a line or two of thought, with space set aside for 5 years.  To follow your growth (or lack thereof, one supposes) over a period.

One of the inevitable questions was what would you like to be different in the New Year.

And since were just a couple weeks past it....I'd like to do Christmas differently next year.

Christmas 2023 was the first I really got to appreciate, after leaving Food Lion.

And I really enjoyed it.  Not having to work 60 or 70 hours in the week leading up to it.  Getting to take it easy, and just enjoy the season.  And I succeeded!

2024 and then 2025?  I dunno.  I think I was struggling a bit for both years.

The one thing I remember about 2024 is out of the blue missing the hell out of my Dad.  After 7 years, it hit me that I still missed him most at Christmas.

I made some peace with it, but then 2025 Christmas came, and I just wasn't feeling it.

Maybe it's just like that some years.

But money was a little tight.  And I had my ablation procedure a couple weeks before Christmas, so that was on my mind.

Shyam suggests that some of it might have to do with my nephew Thomas getting older.  He's 15 now, so not a kid.  There's no Santa or Stockings.  She might be right with that, and if that's the case, I'm not sure there's anything I can do.

I dunno.  I don't have any definitive plan.  Just a thought that I'd like to make that a minor goal.  Save up money a little bit, so that it's not as tight next December.  Think about gifts a little more (and not lose them...I've still got a book meant for my Brother-in-Law floating around my house somewhere--I Griswolded it somewhere around the house.....)

Just a thought, on this 14th day of Christmas or so.