As much as I was dreading the holidays, I’m clearly making it through right now. I mean, it’s still depressing but I’m really working hard to keep myself distracted with work.

It must be working because I’m actually making progress. The site prototype is done. I just finished designing my business cards, and even placed the order yesterday. As I type, I’m waiting for some new tooling I’m incorporating into my WordPress workflow this time around, to finish installing on my laptop.

Just a month ago, I was having an extremely hard time imagining just being at this exact point. I’m still a ways from where I need to be, but I’m so tired of dismissing the small victories in my life.

Lately, I’ve been feeling like that’s been at the root of what has held me back all these years. My whole life, if it wasn’t complete it wasn’t enough. So to combat this, I’ve started being very deliberate in allowing myself to feel accomplishment whenever progress is simply made.

So far so good, it’s keeping me more optimistic than I thought I’d be 30 days ago.

Another accomplishment that’s helping tremendously is that I am done with Christmas shopping.

I don’t believe in Black Friday, or even Cyber Monday for that matter. I feel like the sales are an illusion days, weeks, months in the making. And I think it is cruel to make people working retail, who already rarely get any holidays off as it is, leave their families Thanksgiving night to come deal with savages who will let their fists fly to secure some trendy overpriced toy for their spoiled children, who will break it or lose interest in the space of a week.

I make it a point not to leave my house on Black Friday, and that’s something about me that will never change.

Black Friday aside, I finished my entire list between Saturday and Tuesday. Most of it was online so the last of it is being delivered by Dec 2nd, and the last few things I was able to find quickly and locally while my kids were in school.

And guess what…the sales are still active as I write this on the following Friday. It seems like so many people just live to be whipped up into a pointless frenzy.

I’ll never understand that but, I don’t need to. My list, albeit short (immediate family and secret sister only) is done. Just gotta wrap it all. And to that end, I’m hatching a scheme to sneak things one by one so I’m not up till 3am wrapping it all the night before. We’ll see how that works out.

Well enough babbling, I need to drop off my kindergartner and get back to my tooling setup so I can finally start building my re-designed site. I’m more excited to do this than I’ve been about anything for a while.

I’m not sure I’m ever more generally depressed during the year, than I am at the start of November.

I guess I can attribute it to some specific reasons. Like the stress of extra expenses for gifts. The nostalgia of childhood trips to Florida to spend a full week with cousins I only got to see once a year, if even that. Husband having to work extra long hours and the actual holidays because his job is merciless. All the extra time that you need to somehow fit in, in an already overloaded schedule, for all the obligatory holiday festivities.

Yes those expenses are always stressful, but even when you plan ahead you still have to do the research, the shopping, the wrapping, etc.

Yes, the memories of those trips will always make me smile, but they also make me extremely sad because even if I could afford to book us all flights to go tomorrow, all my cousins are grown and scattered around with their own families and commitments. As much as I’d love to see them at any age, childhood is still over.

Yes, anytime my husband is not home on even the smallest of holidays, it makes me sad. The extra money helps money stress a little, but I would much rather have him home.

Losing my sister and nieces back when I turned 16 has never helped the situation either, but that pretty much adds a note of sadness to literally everything in my life all year round, not just now.

And while for some, the festivities is what they live for, I find it to be such a chore. I don’t care for shopping in general, it’s cute to have the tree and decorations up for a little while, but I could not enjoy putting it all up any less. And sorry not sorry, I’m just not a Christmas music person. It just amplifies my sadness.

So yes, there’s all those very specific reasons, but it also feels like there’s something else under the surface that I can never quite put my finger on. Like if none of those reasons existed for me, I would still feel depressed anyway.

Maybe I’ll never figure it out, but it would have been nice if I hadn’t had such a crippling bout with impostor syndrome last year so I could have been so much farther along at this point than currently I am.

I’m still on track to meet the deadline I’ve set for myself this year, but I would be lying if I said that pushing through the oppressively heavy depression I’m feeling right now, isn’t incredibly challenging and adding exponentially to the pressure.