scrooged

I hate to be a Scrooge, but this week is really suckin'.

I can't plug into the Christmas spirit, for some reason. Partially that's because for me, the family-and-friends part of Christmas is mostly over now (except for visiting Jasmin's family this weekend). The Advent traditions in this church are nice, I suppose, but they are nothing like what I grew up with - and neither are most of the songs - so it just doesn't evoke anything Christmas inside me.

Part of the scrooginess definitely stems from the fact that SEVEN WEEKS LATER, my internet connection at home STILL DOES NOT WORK (although I have complained multiple times, occasionally with tear-stained cheeks, and they keep saying they are working on it) and so I have to choose between being at home and being connected to the place where my friends talk to me (except mostly not so much this week... Christmas means altered schedules for you, too). There are things that must get done at home, things of the cooking, cleaning, washing clothes variety. But if I just go to work and have no non-work-related conversations and then come home and clean and cook and wash clothes and have no conversations at all, then I know for fact that I will shrivel up and die.

Why can't I trade in my stupid, stupid optimism for a good solid chunk of reality-based Facing The Facts? Every day for seven weeks (with the exception of the 14 where I was blissfully at home), I come home from work, slide the key in the lock and my heart jumps up into my chest full of the Hoping and the Expecting and the Maybe Today it'll be Fixed-ing. And it never, never is. Sometimes they give me deadlines: "by next Tuesday it ought to be fixed." And then the optimism dies down to a dull roar in the meantime... but still not enough to avoid the sinking stomach that asserts itself the moment I realize that no one has been in my apartment, or that, even worse, they HAVE and yet have once again failed to do that which technically I am paying them to do. I am starting to dread going home (even more than usual) because it just means having to go through the stupid hopes-dashed-to-the-floor routine, yet again.

But now at least I know something. Soon begins the two-week Christmas (we are still allowed to call it that here) work hiatus where pretty much every office in the city is closed except for ours. So nothing will happen to my computer before January 7th. So I can dispense with the cursed Hoping.

But really, I can't just sit around and complain about the circumstances, because if everyone sat around and complained about their circumstances, my complaints would surely be drowned out by people who have real ones. Objectively, I have it good here. You can't look at my life and say aha! that is the point from which all the unhappiness flows. The truth is that I am manufacturing my own unhappiness, by the bushelful, and I am forgetting how to reverse the process.

I can't stand myself anymore. I didn't realize what awful company I am. People in the past have seemed not to shirk my presence, at least, and a blessed few have professed to enjoy it. But in truth I am boring and unmotivated and can't even come up with a few stupid Christmas traditions so the season doesn't pass me by entirely. This is my fourth Christmas away from home and I don't even remember what Christmas is supposed to be anymore.