Are We There Yet?

It's not feeling a lot like Christmas for me this year, and I can't quite put my finger on why that is.

Although I am not at my normal high level of happiness, I can't say my lack of Christmas warmth and fuzziness is due to sadness; in other words, it's not because I am feeling sad that I am not "feeling" Christmas. I recognize the motions, the flurry of activity around me - watching the news reports of holiday travellers braving the uncharacteristically challenging weather to connect with loved ones, the ebb and flow of shoppers as they run around frantically trying to check everyone off the gift list - and I am mostly unmoved by it.

It's not that I don't have anyone to be around this year. Yes, my son isn't with me, but so far I have received at least three invitations from friends to come and spend Christmas with... I know it bothers the people I care about to think that I would spend Christmas alone; and for that reason alone I am trying to make an effort to push myself towards some kind of plan of where I am going to be on that day.

But honestly, I don't know if I will be successful in making that plan. In a way, the thing I want most for Christmas this year is a little clarity. I want to be solid on the pieces and parts that make up my life - I want to be comfortable in my own skin. The past few weeks I have been brainstorming and strategizing about the activities (both professionally and personally) that I want to spend my time on in 2011, and this holiday down time is the most optimal opportunity to do that. Everyone else is busy with their loved ones, the hustle, the bustle... and I get to focus on: me. And when I look at it from that perspective, it's not such a bad thing. Right?

I was having lunch with an insurance colleague of mine earlier today, and I realized it still has the power to bring me to tears, this talking about my "new life" and how I want to create it. I imagine that once I can pull myself out of the intangible void of ideas and concepts and settle more into the concrete world of reality, I won't be so prone to being emotionally overwhelmed by these thoughts. It's kind of like being at the bottom of a huge mountain you are meant to climb, not having any idea of how you are going to make it to the top. But history tells me how: one step at a time. One foot in front of the other. One minute, then another minute.

Time does fix most things - not because it passes per se, but because everything else in one's world evolves through time's passage. Everything changes. I'M changing.

And all I want for Christmas this year is for time to pass.

Shirley's Theory of Relativity

Examiner.com article #1


At 4:08 a.m. this morning, my son Christopher left for boot camp. Several months leading up to his eighteenth birthday, Christopher was preparing to enlist in the United States Marine Corps - demonstrating an interest and persistence that I had not seen for anything in his whole life up until then.

Knowing this day would come, several of my friends have asked me, "So, Shirley, how are you going to feel when he is gone?" And my response has always been, "I don't know.. I will tell you when he's gone."

There is an interesting kind of symmetry...


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