Today I actually wrote at work. While it may seem my job would include writing given the gigundo (technical word) piles of paper I produce, it really doesn't. I mainly use the same existing template and just update little stuff, like numbers and names. The last actual "thing" I wrote was for my Master's degree. Oh, I blog and e-mail of course, but I don't count that as real writing. Perhaps if I was a professional blogger, I'd consider blogging equivalent to writing. Since I'm not a professional blogger, I consider it a recreational hobby. And a way to get out angst.
Other than school, the extent of my writing lately has been limited to writing Christmas letters. Oh Christmas letters! I would never, ever laugh when reading a 8 page, single-spaced Christmas letters where a person practically admits they have been stalking someone who dumped her. She cannot figure out why he would dump her so she proceeds to say that she still calls him every week to find out why. The Christmas letter becomes this really long blog entry-ish sort of thing, and as entertaining as blogs are to read, please don't make a Christmas letter into some psycho blog entry. Even I of all people know that.
The rule for Christmas letters is to make them light and airy. You do not have to recite all 365 days of the past year. You do not need your Christmas letter recipients to band together and commit you upon receipt of their Christmas letter. That could lead to a very bad Christmas that you spend staring at a bare wall in a padded room.
Which is why I did NOT send out a Christmas letter last year. I was month 6 into colic with a child who wouldn't eat, stir crazy from maternity leave dealing with the aforementioned, and a bit sensitive that everyone but my husband was pressuring me into having another child right away.
My 2008 Christmas letter would have gone something like this:
"We had a beautiful baby girl in June. She's fortunately in good health. That's what the doctors say. Since she screams about 10 hours a day, I personally think something's wrong with her. She doesn't eat much at all, an ounce or two here and there, and I think that's contributing to the whole screaming issue. Everyone tells me it's this stupid thing called colic, which really has no definition and is used to describe fussy behavior in babies. Whatever. We should have named her Damien-a because most days she screams ALL DAY LONG til her nap from 2-4pm. Then she screams ALL EVENING LONG until S gets her to sleep at midnight. Then she screams ALL NIGHT LONG until one of us gets her to sleep at 4am. Why do people think having children is a blessing? Is "blessing" what we call piercing ear pain and sleep deprivation these days? Had I known this is what I was going to be bestowed with, I think I might have voluntarily sterilized myself. I am counting down the days until I go back to work and can hear myself think during the day. I have taken about 1,000 pictures of Damien-a, but there are only about 10 or so where she's not screaming. So I can't even occupy myself during non-screaming times with scrapbooking. I read Twilight, and I don't understand why everyone likes that book series. Have a merry Christmas and happy 2009!"
Yeah, see, it was best I didn't send anything. I would have ended up in Western State Hospital in that padded room, and frankly at that point I really wouldn't have minded.
If I do a 2009 letter, it will (thank goodness) be more optimistic than the 2008 gem.
1 comment:
I always mean to do this but until this year, we haven't had much to write about except to say "yep, we got knocked up again this year." or "Yeah, Seth is going back to school...again" But I think you just inspired me to do it this year since I have a lot of update people on!
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