A few years ago, I took the opportunity to get my sleep schedule turned upside down the entire week before Christmas, making a little DHTML replica of a Windows desktop rechristened "Christmas98" (or whichever year), which would show an animated GIF tree and play some Christmas carol MIDI.
That's exactly the kind of thing I did that let me get an A in the university's web technologies course without thinking much. That's also exactly the kind of thing we don't do anymore for Christmas. For several years, we haven't even really gotten gifts from our parents, just a chunk of the Universal Gift Certificate (ie, money). Last real gift-giving I recall was when I visited Brian in New York (not the city), and brought gifts back for the others in the family.
But it's not really surprising we don't get gifts from our parents, since we're bona fide adults, sort of: me graduating from university in a year (I guess hopefully, but that's another exposition), and my brother with his own family started already. That betrays that to me gift-giving is kind of a childhood thing, something adults don't really do--which only further betrays my lack of adult socialization. I could go on about that for a few pages, deeply rooted in my refusal to have had the play beaten out of me yet, but it's probably boring and typical.
Part of it is I don't feel like an adult, but I've been led to believe I'm supposed to, by omission if nothing else. I'm not capable of taking care of myself, and I don't really have much of a tack for changing that. Especially since there aren't any jobs around here below my whiny immature dignity.
I just feel wholly unprepared for adulthood, have no idea how to change that, and find Christmas just reminds me of it more.
In summary: "Anyway." At least my fingers are warmer now.
Work it harder, make it better
Do it faster, makes us stronger
More than ever, hour after
(H)our work is never over
