Holidays 2009

So far, I have to admit, the holiday season this year is completely underwhelming, if not nearly non-existent. The situation I'm currently involved in has impacted the holiday cheer this year, as well as the fact that I'm broker than usual this year. I've got most of the presents sorted, but really have to stretch my imagination to finish.

Also, my birfday this year was a downer. I woke up at 5 am because I was obsessed with finding the program from my gramma's funeral; I was caught up in my grief this year. This year marked the 8th birfday without her, but this year's events magnified all the more the hole left in my life without her. I'm lost, and even though I've started to find my way back to Me, I couldn't help but wish that I had Gramma to talk to one last time. I went on my yearly trip down to Washington state, did the shopping thing, and then I came home and went for dinner with Jette and Rod. We went to one of my favourite places, Trattoria Italian Kitchen in Kitsilano, and followed it up with a stop at True Confections and a drive through Stanley Park. All in all, a very quiet day.

And then I went home and promptly succumbed to a cold that nearly sent me to the emergency room. A cold itself wouldn't do this, but I managed to injure myself in a way such that I couldn't breathe properly for three days. I'm happy to say I'm well on my way to recovery, but wow did that hurt.

In the meantime, I've been passing the time with an old passion of mine. This year, I was blessed with a muse, and have taken up writing again. Since June this year, I've written or completed more than 30 poems, and countless letters and prose (though the letters and prose never saw the light of day...because of their intensely personal content, most of those have been burned). Except for a brief period in 2002, and a handful of occasion-specific works, I haven't written like this since 1999. And after a decade away, it's delightful to be back to writing. Of course, it does require that I explore myself and the world around me in ways that can be painful, but there is a sophistication in the pieces that I've never been able to express before. And of course a lot of the new stuff is relationship and love-related, meaning it's likely going to be viewed as drivel...but who cares! Poetry is meant to express yearning and feeling!

In the meantime, because I've been sick, I've been ignoring my capstone. Bad, I know, considering I have to have a monster chunk of it done by January 4th (my analysis), but I blame it on the cold, and will spend all of next week up to Friday plowing through it. Yeah...that will increase my holiday spirit.

I'll leave you with this video. This version of this song sums up where I am this holiday season: facing the season with uncertainty, but looking to next year with hope.