This is who I am, but who am I?

So as you all will see by reviewing this blog, I didn't make it all the way through Holidailies last year. I probably won't make it all the way through this year.

As to who I am -- I suppose that depends on who you ask, or when you ask me. Right now, I'm an employee of a research institute with a boss who is...challenging to say the least. I'm fat. I'm -- just as I was last year at this time -- undergoing a series of tests to determine if I've got tumors going throughout my endocrine system, or if there's something else that's causing one of my natural-born steroids to be overproduced (and, therefore, I'm a patient). I'm a daughter, I'm a cousin, I'm a niece. I'm a best friend, a more general friend, an acquaintance, some lunatic on the internet, a total stranger.

I'm an erstwhile student who would love to be formally studying again. I'm an active student learning things every day. I'm wholly atheistic at the same time I'm completely spiritual and fundamentally agnostic.

I'm mentally ill, but this statement and the previous statement have nothing to do with each other. I've got another couple of so-called "invisible" illnesses, but I haven't had them long enough to add them to my self-definition. Also, their fundamental nature may prove to be part of a different health problem, so while I say I have them, they aren't yet a permanent part of my life.

That said, I am not my illness.

I'm a terrible gardener, a passable knitter, a writer, a poet, a severely out-of-practice pianist, the possessor of an inquisitive mind and could be the poster-child for the other face of depression.

I identify as asexual, and I have no pets, though I have previously been owned by rats. There is a neighborhood cat who desperately wants me to be hers, but I don't want a cat.

I'm a terrible housekeeper, an excellent baker, a semi-competent cook.

So that's who I am. Who are you?

Holidailies: Artificial Christmas Trees, Death, and I don't know

First of all, anyone who says that artificial Christmas Trees don't shed their needles has never met the artificial Christmas Tree currently down in my living room.

As I was putting together said tree, I was thinking about my father. Because, you see, we have always had an artificial tree. Always. In fact, we had the same artificial tree for almost thirty-five years. And in some ways, we needed it, too: after a certain point in my family's life, we literally had enough ornaments for three six-foot Christmas trees, and the only reason we could squeeze them all on our little artificial tree was that its branches were pancake-flat. Possibly flatter.

But that wasn't what I was going to talk about.

So we've always had an artificial Christmas tree. For a while, we had an artificial fireplace, too, and since my current abode does not have a fireplace I'm wondering now if I can find one of those somewhere locally. Hm.

But again, I digress.

Because we've always had an artificial tree, putting the tree together doesn't bother me. But the fact that I was the one putting the tree together was bothering me a little, because putting the tree together has always been my father's job. My sister and I would sort the branches by size (a task that got more and more entertaining over the years, as the paint that told us what size a particular branch was slowly wore off until we were manually matching them up to be sure), and we would hand my father the branches in order, smallest to largest, and he would put them in the trunk until we had a tree-like object.

I sounded like my father, tonight, under the tree; breathing just a little heavily, cursing branches that wouldn't go in straight (or at all) as I lay on my back or stomach. And I realized that some day, he isn't going to put the tree together. Someday, my sister or I will be the main hosts for Christmas (they're coming to my place for Christmas this year, but only because my sister wants a white one. We put the tree up at Mom & Dad's, too, even though they won't be home). Some day, my parents will be gone.

And I realized that unless my sister and I have developed some sort of Christmas tradition of our own by then, I probably won't be putting up a tree after that point. Every year I struggle with the fact that I have precious little "holiday spirit" as it is. Oh, I like seeing the lights on other people's houses, and I like seeing their trees in the windows, but it all seems like too much effort to me for a holiday I'm not even sure I want to celebrate.

Seeing the tree in my living room -- undecorated, because I realized I don't have any lights, and while my family will have to make a number of compromises to have Christmas at my house an unlighted tree is not one of them, and I'd also like to get a tree skirt -- doesn't fill me with any sort of spirit. But it did start me thinking about traditions, and how important they are. And how we handle the changing of the guard; traditions have to shift with the needs of the people for whom they are traditional.

As, for example, me trying to start a new tradition of celebrating the New Year with friends, rather than sitting home alone in the dark.

There are other traditions that are being fouled up by my family coming to me for Christmas. We will still decorate cookies together, but we will not be cutting them together on Christmas Eve before we go out and drive around and look at the lights (and yes, unless it's snowing, I am planning to chauffeur my family through the streets and have picked out a couple of houses already I want to be sure to show them) and then come back to the house for hot chocolate and the unwrapping of Christmas Eve pajamas before bed.

And, as far as the tree goes, I'll be stringing the lights, instead of my mother, and I'll be decorating the damn thing alone.

I'm not even sure I've got enough ornaments for a full-sized tree.

Holidailies Day 5: I am weary, kindness

First of all:

I am tired. I am doing battle right now with myself over things that are not really under my control, I have monetary fears, I have health fears, I have driving in the snow fears, my family is coming to my house for Christmas and I haven't decorated or thoroughly cleaned, and it's all just exhausting.

So I have plans this weekend to do some baking and cooking and knitting. Just some homey stuff to make me feel comfortable again. "Nesting," as it were, though the only children I'm expecting are my parents and my sister.

Yesterday, when I was working on my Holidailies entry, I got to thinking about the Unitarian Universalist First Principle ("The inherent dignity and worth of every [sentient] being") and the art of being kind to one's self. Because -- last time I checked -- I fall under the category "sentient being," and I oftentimes don't respect my own inherent dignity or worth. As right now; with everything that's going on in my world I've not been very kind or gentle with myself. Certainly not as much as I need to be, to see that I do make it through and come out the other side no more broken than I already am.

That's another post, perhaps, on being functionally broken.

It is easier to be kind to others than it is to be kind to myself. And surely I'm not the only person who feels this way. What I don't understand is why. Oh, in part it's about wanting to take care of other people because that has been my pattern, to put other people first. But this isn't just that. The unkindness includes me calling myself a "nit" this morning when I kept dropping things in the shower. Calling myself an "idiot" when I forgot something downstairs before bed isn't exactly treating myself kindly, either.

This is supposed to be a season for compassion and charity. I think that, for me at least, I need to "let it begin with me." I need to treat myself as I would treat someone else, which means letting go of negative self-judgments. Not nearly as easy as it sounds, of course, because first I have to catch myself being harsh with myself -- and that also isn't as easy as it sounds. We get so used to the voices in the backs of our heads -- positive or negative -- that it can be difficult to sort out the messages they're sending us.

Mostly, though, I'm weary, right down to my bones. And I can start being kind to myself by acknowledging that I have a lot going on. So being weary is okay.

Holidailies, Day 4: Oops, I did what I knew I'd do

So, I didn't post yesterday. It wasn't actually lack of planning on my part (I have a book -- A Dream Too Wild, with quotations from Ralph Waldo Emerson -- to meditate on if I get stuck, or also 3 AM Epiphany, depending); it was just that life catches up with me sometimes, all unexpected, and then all my best-laid plans just go straight to hell. Or out the window.

Yesterday was one of those days.

Today, I'm not in a much better place emotionally, either, but I made myself a promise that I was going to do this, so I'm going to do it damn it. Even if I miss a day here or there; my plan is to not miss any more days.

See above about plans and life interfering therewith.

One thing that I find interesting about the Holidailies experience, though, is that I can't say "I'll make it up." Because I can't. Holidailies doesn't allow for make-ups; you're allowed your one post per day, and that's pretty much that.

In a way, I think this is a very good thing. Although the little part of me that's all wrapped up in its perfectionism says that since I've missed a day I might as well give up now because I'll never catch up and I'll never manage to meet my goal and and and.

Well, phooey to you, nasty little voice. I'll make as many days as I make, and if I make them all from this point forward, well, that's good. If I don't, that'll work too.

By not being able to go back and "make up" a missing day, I feel as though I've lost something, something I won't get back, and that encourages me to not miss any more. After all, we all have only so many days - why waste even one not doing the things I want to do?

It's a hard lesson to learn. It's not even one I'd say I've managed to completely convince myself about. But...it's like drawing with crayons.

You can't draw "perfectly" with crayons, and in my extremely not humble opinion there's no point in even trying. If you do, you're kind of missing the point of crayons, I think.

Likewise, I can't be "perfect" with Holidailies now. Imagine the pressure that takes off my mind!

Holidailies 2009: Day 2. In which it snows.

So when I wrote that post on Saturday, I never dreamed that I would have anything specific to write about on Monday. As it turns out, I was wrong. This isn't going to be a particularly uplifting or thoughtful post, just a series of observations.

It snowed, starting Sunday night and running through early Monday. Some of the snow got caught and ended up on the San Francisco side of the Sierras, but we had approximately eight inches fall on the valley floor here where I live. Which is unusual. Not completely unheard of; my first or second year here we had such a severe snowfall that carports collapsed in apartment complexes. But unusual. And people don't know how to drive in the stuff.

(A note: I am a part of the subset "people.")

The biggest issue for me, though, was that I had to go out in it. I had appointments I couldn't miss, and after calling and confirming that those with whom I had appointments were still open for business, well, I braced myself and went out.

My mother has observed that she likes it when it's snowing or just after it has snowed, because the world is so quiet. She's right; almost like everything is holding its breath. And the snow is beautiful, too, crisp, I like the sound of it under my feet.

Not so much under the tires of my car.

So I wasn't enjoying the peace or the quiet or the beauty of it all much yesterday, not until about 5 p.m., when the storm finally started to break and I looked out my upstairs window at my eave and saw icicles and the glitter of snow in sunshine.

The sad part about that is that for years I had thought the way the floats for the Disneyland Christmas Parade were decorated was ridiculous -- all that glitter. Surely snow doesn't really look like that.

Well, Disney float designers, I salute you. I was wrong. Snow does in fact glitter, just like that, when the sun hits it. Which I should have realized, if I'd been thinking, because snow is nothing but water crystals, and the facets of most crystals reflect light back in glints and flashes.

And today, it hasn't gotten above freezing yet. So the snow is still on the ground. Though I did get attacked by some kamikaze snow from a pine tree in a parking lot.

And I am amused that the best-plowed streets in town are not in fact those outside the casinos.