I Suck at Christmas

This is the thing, I love giving gifts. The only problem with that is that I really suck at giving gifts.

Quickly, let's run over a few things that make a great gift:

1. The very famous advice "Buy something for them that they wouldn't buy for themselves".
   
   
2. Thoughtful presents that makes their lives more bearable.
   
   
3. Make the gift with a particular skill or a picture to commemorate a special moment in time.
   
   
4. Give them a book that you've read so that you can share the experience.
   
   
5. Give an expensive gift that is thoughtless but keeps them in the updated realm of technology.
   
   
6. Ask them what they want and give it to them.
   
   

This is my checklist for gifts. Seems like a decent list if I don't say so myself(well, I guess I'm saying so). All the same, it's as if I have no check list at all. I am so insecure. No confidence. Using too much brain to estimate and weigh appreciation and acknowledgement. I do know that people generally accept the gifts they are given in good nature but something about this "Inner perfectionist" destroys my holiday spirit to the point that I don't even like the holidays.

When I hit 19 years, my mother go me a flash light. Christmas was so destroyed as in the anticipation of receiving. I simply just stopped caring about getting gifts when I realized that I was equally shitty about giving them. I have put in some serious effort and given some very deeply emotional gifts. Lately, there has been no reciprocity. It makes me wish I could just not be included. Like an opt out option. I am perfectly fine with not giving or receiving gifts. I excel when I can just gift to people when they need because I'm much more reliable in that situation.

I just don't do well with the holidays and despite how much I try to change, all of these thoughts interrupt my effort and nullify my spirit. In the last few years I had come to an opinion that naivete/ignorance was just as useful as intelligence & resourcefulness. Then yesterday, while watching one of my treasured animes, I came across a line that said "The steeper and more dangerous the path, the greater the need for both wit & ignorance to move forward." Hunter x Hunter

I felt like history acknowledged my hypothesis. Of course, if I were a bit better read, this would have been cemented in my recall centers. I'm a sharp boy; I should have read more books. Maybe then I would be more disciplined about things of this nature where I currently struggle. Who knows. I'm not one for the woulda, shoulda, coulda game. It was or it wasn't. You did or you didn't. And I failed this year and last year and the year before. Even with my small victories.

Check out my melodies. I'm creating a nice little pattern of gifts for my loved ones and it'll be the same thing but different every year. Because I simply refuse to be a gift card guardian.