I have the Holiday Blues

Somehow Christmas always manages to make me depressed, and this year is no exception.
I am glad though that most of my friends and I agreed to not exchange gifts so I didn't end up with gifts that weren't personal and spending more money than I can afford (although I did already manage to do that).

I'm the type of person who takes the time to think about the gifts I give and go beyond the suggestions people give me and put thought and heart into a gift. To me something that is much more personal means more than just going off of someone's Christmas list and selecting something at random that you can afford. I think people lose the real meaning of Christmas and get caught up with just buying shit for people without thinking about what they're getting them.

I never give my parents a Christmas list anymore unless they ask for suggestions, and then I tell them things that I need rather than want and things that my friends couldn't afford (GPS last year, and a vacuum or sofa this year). They always manage to figure out the best gifts on their own and those are the one's I enjoy most.

I guess what's really bothering me is that I put a lot of thought, time, and effort into the gifts I got and felt like the same wasn't the case. I do like what I got even if it doesn't feel like a personal gift or that any care or thought was put into the choice of gift. Still, I wouldn't change what I ended up giving as gifts because I had fun trying to come up with that perfect something and how exactly to present it. I thought about almost every little detail down to which wrapping paper to use and took care in picking out the bows for the wrapped presents. When you put that much thought into something I guess not getting even half the effort in gift selection feels like you went way over the top and it wasn't even appreciated.

I even wrote on my Christmas lists I put on here that they weren't to be taken as the end all be all. They were more a means of helping people figure out a base of the sort of things I'm interested in and not as this is what I want nothing else. Most of the stuff I put I knew I wouldn't get and don't really want I was just trying to display my personal tastes.

Listening to: "Gunpowder & Lead" by Miranda Lambert

Quote of the Day: "Christmas is a time when you get homesick, even when you're home." -Carol Nelson