Every few years I am just totally not into Christmas, to the point I get aggravated and depressed.
First, even under the best of times I hate commercials with sleigh bells (about 40%}. With few exceptions I hate Christmas music (one verse, chorus. SAME DAMN VERSE, chorus. Really, would it kill you to write a different second verse?). Commercials where cars are given as gifts (which, actually I have not seen this year.). The steaming Purcell of excrement that is Frosty Returns.
Oh and “Happy Holidays from (x Tv Station) and/or attorney billboards. You ignore me the rest of the year, I don’t want you wishing me Happy Holidays. All of it has a sense of “We’re better than you.” Which I know, I don’t need to be reminded of it.
But this year is especially bad. First both my FFL teams crapped the bed. 8 of 10 teams made the playoffs in one league, I did not. I am a terrible player and I know guys laugh at me behind my back. So, I have given notice I’m out of that league and let the Commissioner know.
In my other league I will most likely finish out of the money for the sixth year in a l row. SIX. Everyone else has finished in the money at least twice. And again here I am sure I get tagged behind my back as “checkwriter.” On the other hand, I only have fourteen more years to go to catch up with the. 1993-2012 Pittsburgh Pirates. Call it a lock.
Anyone can have one bad year, even two. When you have six, maybe it’s time to move on. Maybe it’s a sign you’re a bad player. And if I didn’t run the league, I would walk away. It makes me depressed, I can’t enjoy football anymore. Oh and it’s not the money. It’s not the damn money. It’s about winning and showing that, yes, I can play this game and win. But I clearly can’t, no matter what I do and no matter how hard I try.
Then this: we got our tree today. We put it in the stand (brutally difficult), trimmed it (I dropped five ornaments), watered it, put the skirt around it. The entire process took about eight hours wire to wire And I didn’t smile once. Not once. I did yell a lot though.
And I didn’t put Christmas music on (see above). But I DID see everyone else’s FFL team was going off and mine did not.
This is not the first time I have been depressed for the holidays. But this may be the worst one. And I don’t see the darkness lifting anytime soon.
To anyone who says “it’s always darkest before the dawn” I say tell someone at the North Pole that. The damn dawn isn’t coming for another six months.
I’m not trying to say poor me, but I’m just sad and depressed and Christmas isn’t helping. after hearing “I’m better than you” or reliving your worst moments over and over or your FFL teams and how you cannot play the game, it brings you down. And while obviously it is far preferable to being terminally ill or in the big house or blacklisted in my career, which I do know, I do know it, it still makes me depressed.
That’s all I got. Happy Holidays. And hope yours will be better than mine.