Fifteen Days

It's getting just a little too close to Christmas...

I went through the motions and put up decorations and lights. Then I retreat to the far corner of the house when the house is still at the end of a long day and I don't absorb the goodness of the 'light'.

I am trying very hard to fulfil a Christmas promise and work on one-chapter-per-day for my dad's family's collection of memories. I am (sort of) succeeding. I still need to go back and fix up some chapters but I am taking baby steps. I am approximately one quarter of the way through ... there is a long way yet to go, but I am further ahead than when I started.

I have been puttering away with my Christmas cards. The Christmas correspondence is the one aspect of this season that fuels me. I love this time of year because I correspond with people all over the continent and I don't have to leave my home to do so. I  had such great fun when I started my cards. I played my most favorite music, I sipped on a beverage that went perfect with the season and I wrote. It was a most perfect beginning ...

'All of the above' transpired on a weekend. A weekend that I didn't have to work. At all.

I got the hard work (lights and decorating) done on the Friday night. I dove into the Book Project all guns blazing on the Saturday that followed. It felt good. Then Sunday, it was all wrapped up in a bow when my cards started coming together.

Then the world intruded.

I went out for coffee with a friend and it hasn't been the same since. I'm not blaming the coffee. Nor the friend. It is simply the fact that 'life happens'. A person must pull their head out of what is all-consuming and live life in the moment you are in. That moment will never present itself again.

It started with coffee. It ended with work.

I savored every moment of my most-ideal-weekend. Then I walked smack dab into 'last week' and I was blind sided.

It was challenging on every level. Then I worked all weekend. This new week got off to a better start but there are underlying issues that I have not dealt with. I have a choice to make here. I must either take a stand or else learn to find a way to live with the situation-at-hand. I'm mulling ...

I have two days off before Christmas. I have plans for one of those days. I have one day to do-all-I-need-to-do before Christmas. I have fourteen evenings at my disposal. Do the math, girl. Do the math!

I have done a little calculating and I have come up with one formula. For tonight and tonight only. I made myself an appointment. I am going to indulge myself in tending to my inner Cinderella. I may not have the pretty wardrobe to go with it at the end of the evening ... but I hope to have a little bit of that false sense of self esteem by not cringing when I look at my reflection in the mirror.

I know that this has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas. It is vanity at its worst. But the part of Christmas that I have been dreading the most? Leaving the house. Socializing. Getting together with family and friends.

I have let myself go. It is a slippery slope because I could very easily slide into a place where I just don't care. When a person doesn't care any more, it becomes very easy to want to curl up under a blanket and not come out until the metamorphosis into a butterfly is complete.

I am in a cocoon stage and I need to be a butterfly.

A butterfly has wings to soar and discover the world in a way it never could as a caterpillar. I need to find my wings. I am going to go and look for them in a beauty salon.

And when I find them? I will soar. I will do this 'Christmas Thing' in my own unique way. Don't expect much, people. I am who I am and I can't be more than that. But I'll work with what I have and see where it takes me.

This butterfly-in-waiting has fifteen days to fly to new heights. Ready, set, GO!