Holiday Season Blues

I know that the Holiday season is supposed to be joyous, yet most years I find myself in depression. Work usually involves year end chaos and worries over money. With the free fall in the housing market, residential work is way down and cash flow with it. Hence this year is worse than most. In addition, clients want you to work around their schedules, yet often care nothing of your attempts to have a life. There are days I almost would prefer to not wake up.

On the other hand, the divorce is finally done, my kids are reconciling with me, and my son recovered from his accident, so I have some things to be happy about as the year closes. Yet I find that I have a strong melancholy that I cannot shake. With the 24th and 31st being work days – I am closing a commercial deal on the 31st, in fact - it makes going out of town difficult. I guess I also am finding myself thinking of last year when my ex (who I still very much care about even if we do better living apart) and I spent Christmas at my mom’s place. There is no one special in my life this year – no one even on the horizon.

The roommates are staying in town and they may want to do something on Christmas if I am in town. One of them is not out to his conservative parents and I doubt he'd want to leave the other by himself. They are sweet guys (cute too) and having them around has lessened the loneliness. My best friends, Christopher and Martin, will be out of town (Christopher wants to be somewhere else since this is the first Christmas without his mom and they do not want to go to Marty’s family since his parents – at least his mother - is not very accepting of their relationship even though they got married in Canada last July), so doing anything with them is not an option. I guess I need to decide something soon!!