On December, News Break, and the Holiday Blahs

I suppose there isn't much left of the dumpster fire that's been 2020 at this point, although it hardly matters. It's not as if something magical is going to happen the minute the clock strikes midnight on New Year's Eve or anything. The world will still be as it is, and we'll still be as we are -- hurting but healing and figuring out what's next for us. But that is, without a doubt, one of the more valuable lessons I've learned this year. 

You may not be able to control all of your circumstances to the extent you'd like, but you have total control over how you react to them. As someone who's had to teach herself to willingly take the reins of her own life over the years, I'm pretty proud of how consistently I showed up and showed out this year. I managed to turn some of the worst challenges of my life into fruitful, productive ways to earn, heal, and express myself this year.

This has especially been the case with my writing. I ended last year as a burnt-out copywriter who wasn't even sure how she'd be making ends meet in the year to come. I'm finishing this one in a completely different place. Not only did I find newer, better avenues for my copywriting skills, but I also became a professional blogger and found paying outlets for what I think of as my "real" writing. I completed the first draft of a book this year -- my very first stab at book writing ever to result in a finished manuscript. I have a running list of additional avenues I'll be exploring in 2021 and beyond, as well. I'm exceedingly happy with where I am right now and excited about everything yet to come.

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Like a lot of my friends and favorite writers on Medium, I've been testing the waters at News Break this month. I was invited to join their creator program at some point over the past couple of months, but I slept on it a while, as they seemed to be looking for citizen journalists as opposed to writers who do... whatever the hell it is I do. But then many writers from my circle started saying they saw some decent traffic there, even if all they'd done is republish their personal development stuff from Medium, so I decided to try the same thing. 

"Christmas Means Family" Is a Full-of-Shit Statement

Clark Griswold is still my spirit animal.

Now that November's over and December is officially here, we're officially in the process of shifting gears at my house. That means the Christmas lights are lit on a nightly basis, and we've officially started our yearly watchings of some of our favorite holiday films. Last night's pick was one of my personal favorites -- National Lampoons Christmas Vacation. 

The older I get, the more I think I relate to Clark (Chevy Chase) on a level I never did when I first fell in love with this film. I keep holidays very low-key these days for all sorts of reasons, but I'm usually the person in my household that does most of the planning for holiday celebrations. I put together the menus and do all the cooking. Back when my living situation allowed for it more, I used to get pretty into decorating my apartment and trying to make it feel like a magical place to be for the holidays. Sometimes I'd go overboard or fail to plan ahead well enough and wind up shooting myself straight in the foot, just like Clark, but it's probably not too hard to understand why.

Growing up, I was a very idealistic child, and my home life failed to measure up in many ways. My parents stopped loving each other at some point when I was a little kid but made the "honorable" decision to "stay together for the kids" anyway. I don't know who they thought they were fooling, though, because it was pretty apparent that neither of them was about that family life. My dad openly dated other women and was home as little as possible, even around the holidays. My mom more or less just gave up on domestic life -- hated to cook, hated doing the mom thing, and hated keeping house. Each of my parents bad-mouthed the other to my brother and me non-stop, so that was fun.

On Holidays and the Malaise That Sometimes Comes with Them

Every time I randomly decide to blog after not having really blogged for a while, I wonder what my problem is as to why I'm no longer the consistent blogger I used to be years ago. I usually just blame the fact that I write professionally for a living because of the way it burns through so much of my creative energy for the week. And honestly, that probably is part of it.

Every so often though, I realize that it's probably more because I don't truly feel like my life is worth recording the way I used to. I don't do anything or go anywhere. I feel like I never have good news or exciting changes to report. I honestly feel like the only thing I really do with my time is work and lie around like a slug attempting to recover from work. While I definitely like being able to eat, I don't get any kind of personal fulfillment out of working for its own sake the way other people do, so it's a problem that that's the only thing I really have going on. 

I guess what I'm saying is I feel like my life kind of blows right now. When I feel like life blows, I feel very little urge to actually record anything about it. This is despite the fact that I've always found journaling to be therapeutic. I know I need to be taking back some of my creative energy for myself now and then, but it's not as easy as it probably should be.

Writing Lab: It's Not Christmas without Our Duck

Christmas dinner wasn't a big deal in my home growing up, but it has become an extremely big deal to Seth and me since we've been together. Lots of different dishes have taken center stage over the years and they've all been delicious, but our favorite is definitely roast duck.

Although we absolutely love turkey, we're just not ready for another one so soon after Thanksgiving. We also love ham, but that just seems so much better suited to New Year's dinner, as it's considered good luck to eat pork as your main protein. Pheasants and geese can be expensive and hard to find. Chicken just doesn't seem special enough for Christmas dinner, as we eat chicken frequently throughout the year.

Where all of those other things just aren't quite the right fit, duck is perfect. It roasts long enough to make the entire house smell like Christmas. It's fancy enough to feel like a nice splurge and it generates just enough meat to feed the both of us. There's usually a bit of leftover duck -- enough to make the homemade duck chili Seth likes or a couple of wraps for lunch -- but not so much that we're still eating our way through it by the time New Year's rolls around and we want to make a ham or something.

Writing Lab: New Traditions Have a Way of Sneaking Up on You

It occurs to me that I picked the strangest possible month to start participating in one of BlogHer's post-a-day challenges. As anyone that's read my responses to any of the other prompts is probably figuring out, I tend to feel like a fish out of water around the holidays.

Despite being on the threshold of middle age, I don't have children, nor do I have really close-knit, lifelong ties to most of my other family members. I don't have a busy social life that finds me entertaining friends (or letting them entertain me) every year either.

All I really have is my relationship with my fiancé. We're not exactly people of means, nor do we connect with many other people around the holidays. We are very much used to being a team of two at this point and when I picture holiday traditions, I tend to picture a coming together with lots of other people, particularly family. That picture doesn't really apply to our life as we know it, so for a long time, I didn't think the word "tradition" applied to anything we liked to do either. That said, I actually like how these prompts are challenging me to take a closer look at that point of view and reevaluate a few things. I'm beginning to realize that that's something I really needed to do.

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Writing Lab: On Traditions, Family, and Filling the Void

I don't actually have children, nor have I ever wanted any. I've never developed even a hint of a maternal instinct or thought I would make a good mother. That said, I guess I'm realizing I've never really thought about anything to do with the holidays (or life in general) from that particular angle -- what it would all look like as one of the heads of a family.

I've never daydreamed about having someone to mentor and teach things to someday. I've never wondered what it would be like to have somebody else to inherit my traditions and keep them alive after I'm gone. I have no idea if it's odd for a 39-year-old woman to literally never have considered those things, but there it is just the same.

Seth has three children from his previous marriage. Back when we first got together, I assumed that sooner or later I would wind up developing some form of stepmother relationship with them at some point. But they're older now and seem to have little to no interest in either of us, so at this point, I pretty much just take it for granted that such relationships weren't part of God's plan for me. It's not even something that bothers me. It seldom to never crosses my mind and I don't feel like anything is missing from my life because I'm not really a parent in any capacity. It just is what it is like a lot of things in life.

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Writing Lab: Lights, Legs, and Zombies

The funny thing about Seth and me around the holidays is we aren't always consistent about things like decorating. Although we may stay put in the same spot for years at a time, there's been a tone of impermanence to our lives as far as where we live for quite some time now.

Hardships like lay-offs and serious illness have seen us moving a lot, living with family members when/if we need to, and so forth. That said, it's been a long time since we lived somewhere that truly felt like "home" -- someplace that felt like it was ours to decorate and leave our stamp on however we chose.

There have been many, many holidays where we just haven't been able to get into the holiday spirit at all because of that. On the down years, we will still very likely watch our Christmas movies or make something delicious to eat for Christmas dinner, but we might not really bother decorating. It just depends on where we both are mentally and emotionally at the point where it's time to start thinking about it.

Thankfully, a bit of that malaise that's sometimes surrounded the holidays for us has been lifting a bit in recent years, so we've been doing at least a bit of decorating. As with everything we do in life, we have our own unique spin we put on things that really feels like us.

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There are two kinds of people in this world -- those that think Halloween is a single day that comes once a year and those that treat Halloween like an all-the-time affair. Seth and I are the second type. We are very much into things like horror movies, Gothic novels, creepy folk tales, and ghost stories. (Seth actually runs a very popular horror website called MoreHorror.) A lot of our Halloween-themed items stay up all year round and get a special holiday treatment. 

Writing Lab: End of the Year Traditions

I hemmed and hawed about it a bit like I do, but I eventually decided I did want to participate in NaBloPoMo this month. BlogHer apparently decided to repackage the monthly event as an ongoing Writing Lab with daily prompts though, so instead of making a commitment for a month, you're supposed to just pick up a prompt whenever you feel like it instead.

Personally speaking, I think I'd still like to at least try to stick with things all month. However, I might eventually find that I'm grateful not to have made an ongoing commitment. That way I don't feel like I have to quit altogether if I need to skip a few days because of work or whatever. I'm just going to play things by ear and see how it all works out.

I also decided to join the BlogHer Writing Lab Facebook group so I can share my progress and some of my posts if I feel like it. I've fallen way, way out of the habit of actually meeting and socializing with other bloggers and sometimes I wonder if that might be part of the reason I don't invest more energy in my personal writing. I tend to go back and forth between wanting an audience and not wanting one, so I hesitated to even mention I was doing this challenge to anyone. I eventually decided the worst thing that would happen is I make a couple of friends and discover some new blogs to be interested in though. So here we are.

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