I’m sitting on my couch in a room transformed into the Christmas my husband and I never felt we had. Both of us had mothers with illnesses, especially around the high-stress times of Christmas, and we tiptoed through the house hoping not to aggravate things. So now we have stockings (hanging on a windowsill; our mantle is a fake fireplace and scaled to make the stockings look ridiculous). We have greenery and seasonal stuffed toys and a now-collectable Avon Christmas train tree that plays tinny Christmas carols. And a tree, lit like my tree in my childhood was, with little multicolored lights. (These modern lights are a bit day-glo, but I’m okay with that).
We play Christmas music almost non-stop. One thing I didn’t know about my husband when I met him is that he has an ever-growing set of Christmas albums on iTunes. Right now, it’s cool jazz; I’m looking forward to some classical pieces on the soundtrack.
This is where some would piously import that trees and such aren’t the real meaning of Christmas. I would argue against this; the real meaning of Christmas is celebration. Let people celebrate the spirit of good that they will. Richard and I celebrate recovery from painful childhoods, among other things. We celebrate that we can make a Christmas for ourselves.
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I really apologize for the test note blog yesterday — I was testing to see if IFTTT could submit a post announcement to Twitter and Facebook so I could quit the extra step of using Hootsuite to post. (Note: It can’t.) Ten of you actually read the post, which is really nice of you.)
Tag: celebrating
Summer productivity
My school year officially ended at noon yesterday, after I finalized my grades and finished my office hours. Now I’m officially in summer mode.
That means I have some uninterrupted blocks for writing. This doesn’t mean I’ll only be writing this summer. I have a class I’m taking in administration of disaster mental health programs, I have at least twenty interns to supervise, I have research I should do, I have classes to put together for the summer, I have my gardening …
Professors don’t really have the summer off, we just have more freedom to schedule things as we need them.
So, writing. I’m celebrating the end of the semester with a writing retreat in a cabin at Mozingo Lake next week for two nights. I’m hoping the change of scenery will help me get ahead on the rewrite for Apocalypse.
I’m talking this all out loud because the concept of planning out this summer productivity is new to me. Before my bipolar diagnosis, I pushed myself hard at the end of the semester, usually swinging between hypomanic and depressed, then collapsed on the finish line and slept for two weeks. Or longer. A lot of summers went by when I could barely function to do my summer work.
Being able to enjoy productivity on my own terms is a very new concept for me. And I plan to enjoy it.
Words Like Me 