Christmas Accomplished

Painful as it was getting here - Verily, though I come kicking, screaming, wailing and gnashing teeth - Christmas itself has come off quite well. I am thoroughly satisfied with my long-tormented gift selections. Though I began with feeling uninspired and apprehensive to spend, my few inspirations now appear to have been dead on, and the time spent brooding over them, worthwhile.

If I can say this without sounding like a cock... I occasionally catch a glimpse of myself from a perspective not my own. And I don't think it's anyone else's perspective either. But it's sort of, what I'd call, a hypothetically valid perspective; a way of seeing me that no one does - including myself - but that we all could without necessarily being wrong. Today I saw how all the stress and frustration I suffered picking out gifts and deciding how much to spend, could be measured as a positive personality trait. I see, not in an after-school-special, day-time TV way, but in a real, serious, human being way, that the anxiety and pain I experience in life is often evidence of my legitimate desire to please the people around me; to see people happy.

I was chewing acid all month trying to find the money to spend on gifts worth giving, and at the end of it all I witnessed the seeds of my suffering blossom in the delight of the people I gave to. When I was wracking my brain for ideas, all I could see was the lack of them. But today it finally hit me that the lack of ideas did eventually give way to ideas, and the reason they did was because I spent so much time thinking about them. And the time spent thinking about them was really time spent in consideration of another person's nature. So when I say I see myself from a hypothetically sound perspective, I mean that I now recognize how I too - cold, selfish, fickle old taciturn me - could be measured a considerate, caring person.

Hey! I did it! I managed to compliment myself without sounding like a giant tool!