It's been years since I've spent Thanksgiving with my family
‘Tis the season… for ennui
It's not that I haven't celebrated Thanksgiving, it's just that since midway through college I've primarily been spending it at Jinny's place, which works out pretty great because then we spend Christmas with my parents and Jinny's family doesn't care if she misses Christmas because they're Jewish. I did miss Thanksgiving pretty much entirely one or two years because I had a retail job and therefore was mandated to work on Black Friday.
And now... it's COVID! I'm sure as shit not about to hop on a plane to Boston, are you kidding me? Have you seen how packed the airports are? Have you seen how absolutely out of control COVID is in most parts of the United States? How hospitalizations are rising, rising, rising?
I like Thanksgiving as a holiday. It's nice to see family (or the in-laws, as it were), I like stuffing and Turkey a lot, and reflecting on gratitude is important, so I don't see what's not to love. I mean, there's the genocide, but in terms of the actual contents of the celebration, it doesn't get much better.
Normal-ass days
Holidays mean a lot as a kid since, wow! Doing these things only once a year? Man, that's such a long time! Thanksgiving was always an extended family affair at my place or at one of my cousins' and there would be a huge delicious meal, oftentimes with an Italian cuisine spin (if you haven't had a manicotti binge for the holiday, you are missing out), and it would be excellent fun.
As I got older, holidays became less special. This is natural since a year is no longer such a long stretch of time, but the kickoff of this despecialization process was not celebrating my birthday in college. Due to a quirk of timing, my birthday was always right around finals time. Yeah, just party with me the night before a test responsible for a quarter of your grade! Great fun!
It wasn't until I spent Christmas away from home, flanked by workdays on either side of it that Christmas became less special too and after that, it's been really difficult not to see holidays as anything other than normal-ass days.
It's been years since I've done something more than a half-assed costume for Halloween. I mean... what the hell? Halloween is the most damn fun a holiday can be -- even more fun as an adult than a kid if we're being honest here -- and yet for years the thought has crossed my mind to put together a really cool costume and I just... don't want to put the effort in. It's been years since I've had a Fourth of July gathering of any sort and my last couple New Year's were spent with a distinct lack of partying, staying up until midnight but not doing anything in particular. For this past New Year's, Jinny and I watched Train to Busan, then called it a night.
COVIDgiving
And of course, outside of some phone and Zoom calls I wouldn't have otherwise had, COVIDgiving was not all that different from any other day I've had in quarantine. Which is to say I've been inside and hardly able to focus on a single damn worthwhile thing.
Christmas is looking precarious this year too. Jinny and I have been considering road-tripping up to see my parents, but man oh man, COVID cases are only going to get more severe over the coming month. Have you seen how packed the airports are? Have you seen how absolutely out of control COVID is in most parts of the United States? Have you seen how hospitals in El Paso have gotten so full that the National Guard was deployed for the sole purpose of hauling out dead bodies?
Holidays have been normal-ass days to me for a long time now. I can't blame COVID for making that impression on me, however.
Why should it be this way?
It sounds like I'm complaining about the monotony of the day to day. So... shouldn't I then be doing everything I can to make these holidays -- or even more days -- feel important and different in some way? Can be as simple as decorating for the occasion or coming up with a tradition or cooking an interesting and different meal. If it's the monotony, the lack of specialness that's getting to me, shouldn't I put in the effort to make as many days as I can special regardless, not just holidays?
Ah, now I've stumbled on the crucial word: effort.
I simply don't have the motivation to put in the effort it would take to make these days feel special and different in some way. I would need to like... plan things out, and then like... acquire supplies and like... yeah man, I guess that's not that much effort, but like... I dunno, I guess I just don't want to, so...
...so I continue to be a slug person where every day is a copy-paste mess of all the days that have come before. I could put in the effort that would shake me out of the rut, but I just don't want to.
As alluded to, it's not just holidays I can't get the will mustered up to make myself feel different. It's pretty much every part of my life.
Deciding things is hard
The amount of brainpower and energy it has taken to simply decide that yeah, I was going to write this dang thing and post it? It's stupid how much energy that took. Doing anything creative has been a struggle and I could blame it on COVID, but I know it's been a struggle long before that. I just cannot gather the will together to just sit down and do the damn thing, whatever the damn thing is this particular day. Even though I have a designated amount of writing time cordoned off each and every day, I'd like you to hazard a guess as to how much of that time I actually spend writing and how much of it I spend fucking around on Twitter or curating my goddamn music library or some other inane shit.
It's not a good ratio, folks.
Holidays aren't special days. It's not like they have to be either. If you don't want to change things up for a holiday, then you are well within your rights to do so.
But, mitigating circumstances of work or pandemic notwithstanding, one should choose not to change things up, right? I haven't really been choosing -- I've just been coasting along day to day and I don't even make the conscious effort not to make the days special because I'm just... riding a wave. A malaise wave.
(tastes like old mayonnaise)
Falling
My lack of willingness to put in the relatively minor effort into making holidays notable days is something indicative of a much deeper problem in my psyche recently... or maybe it's been there all along.
I'm not really deciding what to do with my time. I'm just falling from one activity to the next: from waking to my morning routine, morning routine to work, falling from task to task there, falling into my writing back home, falling into distraction, then falling into YouTube or video games or maybe reading if I'm feeling really radical.
I'm tried of falling deeper down this hole of thoughtless activity. I want to climb out. Climbing takes effort. And the first big effort is to decide to. I must learn, then, to keep deciding, every hour of every day.
It takes a lot of effort to decide. I'd like to make it easier if I can. I don't believe willpower alone is the best way to make changes in one's life because willpower is almost always bound to fail. So you need structures and clever tricks to get yourself to do what needs to be done. At least I do.
I don't know how to structure myself into making "conscious choosing" a default state of being.
I'm hoping to figure it out soon. I'd love to more often chose creation, or chose to help people, or chose to be social, or chose to appreciate art, or chose to do a task with as much focus and quality as possible.
That goes for choosing to chill a little too.
An antidote to atomization
Look, it's good to work on oneself and all, but one of the great sleight-of-hands in the dominant ideology of our age is the tendency to place the burden of problems down to the individual level. Yes, I have plenty I need to put in order for myself, but the times in recent memory where the days were less blurry, when there were special occasions that I actually remember, it was because I was injected in a community.
I'm very bad at sticking around communities and that is another foible of mine COVID has teased wider open in me.
Boom. Problem solved. I just need other people to make things special!
Easier said than done and it's not really a full solution or plan, but it's a way to end this little essay on something not too melancholic, yah?
Now, I just need to figure out how to get myself to pay attention to all those Discords I've joined and when I do that... oooooh, I will not be stopped!