A confession: I’m not feeling the Christmas spirit much this year. I’ve mostly sat this Christmas out. A few weeks ago, while Cari and our daughter were decorating the tree, I asked if I could skip doing all the outside decorations we normally do, and Cari said it was okay.
I don’t really know why I’m in this frame of mind this year. I suspect it could be something to do with losing my mom a couple months ago, or leaving my job earlier this year and dealing with some bad tastes in my mouth that came from that situation. I really don’t know.
And I need to apologize to family and friends for this because my lack of Christmas spirit has impacted you.
See, one of my tasks each Christmas is to keep a spreadsheet of all the people we buy gifts for, what gifts we’re buying for them, where we’re buying (or bought) them, when we ship(ped) them, etc. The spreadsheet was born out of necessity many years ago. Between December 16 and 28, we have both kids’ birthdays and Christmas — that’s a lot of gifts to buy and organize, so I started tracking it all in the spreadsheet. And then I added in gifts for other family members, friends, etc.
Here’s the problem: I didn’t bother with the spreadsheet this year. š
This Christmas malaise led me to skip the whole thing this year. Cari has been busier than normal with her real estate career (she’s had 13 new leads in the past six weeks just through her website, not to mention other new clients coming in from referrals), and didn’t get a chance to focus on the holidays until the last week or so. In fact, she and Sean went out Saturday (the 23rd) and spent several hours catching up on shopping — stuff that we would’ve done much earlier if I’d been on top of things and organized like I normally am. One example: We normally send out a photo book to family members as a gift each year, but that didn’t happen.
So I need to say “I’m sorry” to friends and family this year. I’ve been a bit in the dumps mentally and just couldn’t get myself in the Christmas spirit. And some of you ended up not getting cards or gifts from us because of it.
This isn’t an excuse, but an explanation. I promise to get back in the swing of things next year, and I’m sorry that doesn’t make up for this year.
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