Holiday Blues
Waiting for a car. Waiting for a ride in the dark....Waiting for the right time.
Post 4 of my annual end of the year self-examination which started a week and a half ago with a look The Search for the Perfect Relationship, followed by Dating and Aging, followed by Sex Makes People Crazy. All of them staggering works of genius.
Today I woke up in a funk. I think the holidays make me sad.
But sad is not the right word.
When I picture "sad" I think of someone stewing in their melancholy, sitting alone, and over analyzing their place in the most maudlin of ways. And while I am sometimes more alone than I would like, I don't often feel melancholy or ennui. As for over-analysis, when you're a fucking super genius who spent a large part of your formative years with classic literature and art films, analysis and the search of self-awareness just becomes a part of every day life. Blame Milan Kundera. Or Woody Allen. Or Ingmar Bergman. Or Fitzgerald. Or Hemingway.
Nostalgic is probably the right word. And while nostalgia is definitely based in fond memories, there is also the bittersweet.
Christmas is the holiday that resonated more with me as a child than Thanksgiving. And it wasn't just about the gifts, although there is that excitement of Christmas morning that comes with being a kid. But it's also about a break from school in the middle of the year and a couple of weeks spent playing with friends. And that's also the feeling that carried on into adulthood. In college it was the end of the semester. Time for parties and hanging out and letting off steam. And in my twenties it was a time when everyone got together and hit bars and told old stories and reminisced. Even as we started moving out to different parts of the world.
But all of that has slowly faded as I get older. People have careers. People have families of their own. In-laws. Obligations. And while I know most of us would like to just get together in a big group and have fun, it becomes increasingly more difficult as we're scattered all over the damned globe. Even my family is more scattered now with families and in-laws and obligations of their own.
I never had a big family to whom I was close. We lived a few hours from my mom's relatives and all my cousins were much older or much younger. And my dad's relatives were a dozen states away. I don't know if that's the cause, but for whatever reason I have a smaller group of relationships--both with family and friends--that I cherish to an insane degree. Some people have hundreds of people that touch their lives and 50 or 60 they consider best friends. They get together with who they can. But I have this small network of people with whom I really, really connect and that I cherish and want in my life as much as possible, and getting to spend as much time with them as I would like gets to be damn near impossible.
If I have one flaw--and, really, I'm fucking awesome and it's debatable that I have any flaws--it's that I have always lived too much in my head. I'm an overly optimistic dreamer. I plan and picture things in my head and want them to go that way. I crave moments. Magic. Memories. Things that will stick in my head for years. And I'm sure that is a result of spending too much of my life watching films or reading books. I'm a product of the pop culture I grew up surrounded by--in much the same way that women of my generation are often overly-influenced by the romantic comedies of their youth and believe relationships should be magical connections with overachieving type-A guys who are capable of nonstop scintillating witty banter and tender moments...or with the rich prick who suddenly has a heart while the funny, quirky, Duckie oddball is designated only for friendship. Lloyd Dobler and his chatty insecurity and genuine emotion is nice for a crush, but nobody really wants a dude in a trench coat to show up outside their window blaring Peter Gabriel tunes.
I live too often in the future. I want my dreams to happen yesterday. And that can be a great things in some aspects of life. Certainly being pushy and restless has been a mostly positive experience that leads to me over-achieving at work.
But in other aspects of life you can not plan perfection. You can't rush things. And daydreaming about the future can be a pleasant diversion, but it can also lead to disappointment along the way. You can not make every holiday season into a series of memories that seem like they'd fit perfectly into It's a Wonderful Life, no matter how much you'd like to lasso the moon. And, unfortunately, you also can't make it into a Hawaiian dream vacation surrounded by everyone you love with cool gifts, lots of cocktails, and the warmth of the sun.
Still, I look forward to the holidays every year--if only for the break from worm and the time with family. And I dream of perfection--perhaps foolishly, since half the holidays I've spent in Texas have been marred by relationships dissolving. It's apparently popular at this time of year according to statistics. Though I don't really dwell on the bad memories in general and haven't spent any time consciously thinking about past relationships at all as of late. I remain optimistic about the future almost always. I just too often get trapped in my head and wanting the future to be NOW.
And maybe I'm over-thinking all of this. It got cold today. It's been rainy this week. And the sun comes up to late and sets way too early. And that alone could explain a mental funk.
Or maybe I'm just getting testy about airport travel. Because something that excites me and that I enjoy 95% of the time seems like a fucking headache at this time of year. Especially to middle Georgia. I have a feeling I'd feel different if I were on a plane to South America tomorrow.
Post 4 of my annual end of the year self-examination which started a week and a half ago with a look The Search for the Perfect Relationship, followed by Dating and Aging, followed by Sex Makes People Crazy. All of them staggering works of genius.
Today I woke up in a funk. I think the holidays make me sad.
But sad is not the right word.
When I picture "sad" I think of someone stewing in their melancholy, sitting alone, and over analyzing their place in the most maudlin of ways. And while I am sometimes more alone than I would like, I don't often feel melancholy or ennui. As for over-analysis, when you're a fucking super genius who spent a large part of your formative years with classic literature and art films, analysis and the search of self-awareness just becomes a part of every day life. Blame Milan Kundera. Or Woody Allen. Or Ingmar Bergman. Or Fitzgerald. Or Hemingway.
Nostalgic is probably the right word. And while nostalgia is definitely based in fond memories, there is also the bittersweet.
Christmas is the holiday that resonated more with me as a child than Thanksgiving. And it wasn't just about the gifts, although there is that excitement of Christmas morning that comes with being a kid. But it's also about a break from school in the middle of the year and a couple of weeks spent playing with friends. And that's also the feeling that carried on into adulthood. In college it was the end of the semester. Time for parties and hanging out and letting off steam. And in my twenties it was a time when everyone got together and hit bars and told old stories and reminisced. Even as we started moving out to different parts of the world.
But all of that has slowly faded as I get older. People have careers. People have families of their own. In-laws. Obligations. And while I know most of us would like to just get together in a big group and have fun, it becomes increasingly more difficult as we're scattered all over the damned globe. Even my family is more scattered now with families and in-laws and obligations of their own.
I never had a big family to whom I was close. We lived a few hours from my mom's relatives and all my cousins were much older or much younger. And my dad's relatives were a dozen states away. I don't know if that's the cause, but for whatever reason I have a smaller group of relationships--both with family and friends--that I cherish to an insane degree. Some people have hundreds of people that touch their lives and 50 or 60 they consider best friends. They get together with who they can. But I have this small network of people with whom I really, really connect and that I cherish and want in my life as much as possible, and getting to spend as much time with them as I would like gets to be damn near impossible.
If I have one flaw--and, really, I'm fucking awesome and it's debatable that I have any flaws--it's that I have always lived too much in my head. I'm an overly optimistic dreamer. I plan and picture things in my head and want them to go that way. I crave moments. Magic. Memories. Things that will stick in my head for years. And I'm sure that is a result of spending too much of my life watching films or reading books. I'm a product of the pop culture I grew up surrounded by--in much the same way that women of my generation are often overly-influenced by the romantic comedies of their youth and believe relationships should be magical connections with overachieving type-A guys who are capable of nonstop scintillating witty banter and tender moments...or with the rich prick who suddenly has a heart while the funny, quirky, Duckie oddball is designated only for friendship. Lloyd Dobler and his chatty insecurity and genuine emotion is nice for a crush, but nobody really wants a dude in a trench coat to show up outside their window blaring Peter Gabriel tunes.
I live too often in the future. I want my dreams to happen yesterday. And that can be a great things in some aspects of life. Certainly being pushy and restless has been a mostly positive experience that leads to me over-achieving at work.
But in other aspects of life you can not plan perfection. You can't rush things. And daydreaming about the future can be a pleasant diversion, but it can also lead to disappointment along the way. You can not make every holiday season into a series of memories that seem like they'd fit perfectly into It's a Wonderful Life, no matter how much you'd like to lasso the moon. And, unfortunately, you also can't make it into a Hawaiian dream vacation surrounded by everyone you love with cool gifts, lots of cocktails, and the warmth of the sun.
Still, I look forward to the holidays every year--if only for the break from worm and the time with family. And I dream of perfection--perhaps foolishly, since half the holidays I've spent in Texas have been marred by relationships dissolving. It's apparently popular at this time of year according to statistics. Though I don't really dwell on the bad memories in general and haven't spent any time consciously thinking about past relationships at all as of late. I remain optimistic about the future almost always. I just too often get trapped in my head and wanting the future to be NOW.
And maybe I'm over-thinking all of this. It got cold today. It's been rainy this week. And the sun comes up to late and sets way too early. And that alone could explain a mental funk.
Or maybe I'm just getting testy about airport travel. Because something that excites me and that I enjoy 95% of the time seems like a fucking headache at this time of year. Especially to middle Georgia. I have a feeling I'd feel different if I were on a plane to South America tomorrow.