Rambling Exasperation. ‘Tis the season…


December is the cruelest month.

I know that's not how the actual saying goes, but I think that December - at least the first three weeks - can definitely be the most demanding, exasperating, and just plain difficult time of the entire year.

I know - it sounds like Scrooge all over again, and I'm sorry, but from the day after Thanksgiving until Christmas Eve, my life is a sleep-deprived blur. I work in Finance, and like millions of others, I find year-end to be filled with the most hectic and challenging of work schedules. The fact that get a week off between Christmas and New Year's only means that the "year-end" occurs on December 24th rather than on the 31st. Okay, I should be grateful for the annual vacation, but it comes with a price... three weeks of absolute craziness trying to close the books on another year.

Add to all this the Holiday activities, shopping and decorating and everything else, and it only compounds the frustration. Really, who has time for all this? I get particularly unnerved when I have to wait in a long line of over-laden Walmart Christmas shoppers when all I am buying is a $2.00 battery for my ever-more-stressed bathroom scale. (Actually, I'm not doing too badly with the weight, considering this is also the "let's eat until we're miserable" season.)

It's no wonder we love Christmas. It's the first relatively sane day of the entire month. What am I going to do until then? Play a lot of Holiday music, try not to eat too much, work hard, and keep looking forward to that most special of all days. Heck, I might even learn to enjoy being crazy for the next few weeks.
I'd love to write more, but I'm off to Cole's birthday party. I have exactly eight minutes to get there. Good thing I didn't have to wrap a present.
Maybe December isn't so cruel after all.

Comments

Fiauna said…
I feel your pain. Every December Aaron looks forward to a month of holiday merriment before tax season officially begins in January only to come home from work frustrated at just how busy work is in December. Despite calling his clients in October about year-end tax planning, they always seem to wait until the end of December to call him back. Argh!

Oh well. This too shall pass.
December 8, 2009 at 8:34:00 AM PST
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