How do you feel during the holidays?

Thank you RubySoho6 and WCW. I'm an American, but just grew up in Haiti with American parents, but lived mostly in the US until I came to Thailand in 2010, with one semester teaching in Mexico in 2001. I hated holidays because it fell on the "woman" of the house..cooking, cleaning, entertaining sniping in-laws, shopping, wrapping, buying, etc. Plus, I don't eat processed food or meat, so the food was something I had to buy just for them, and the tree took two days to put up and decorate. All the time I had to pretend it was fun, pressure my daughter to give up her plans with her friends to spend Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners with the family. I'm partially trans, so see myself as male, so have little to NO interest in all the hoopla. I just want to be out in the woods taking bird photos, so that is what I do here!
https://picasaweb.google.com/rachelbro3/ScenesAroundThailandNakhon#slideshow/5915847078265942562

 

I am always super holiday spirited. I love the smells, the decorations, the food, just the feeling of holidays in general. This is my first Christmas with my husband so we're creating our own traditions together beginning this year.

This is also my first Christmas in 7 years without my mom or my sister. But because my family can't get their shit together, I won't be able to. It's a long story, but this will make it the hardest Christmas I've ever had.

 

Those are great pics.

So many people don't follow their dreams or live the life they want to live because of the pressures of family, friends or society in general.

It's too bad things can't be different. It's too bad everyone can't understand that everybody should live their own life. It's too bad we all can't be brave enough to break free of other's expectations and live the way we want.

Keep taking those great pics!

 

Thanks, WCW-I liked your sunset photo also! If you have a wife to do all the holiday work, you have it made in the shade. My problem is that I was trying hard to "play wife" and do all the work, when I felt mostly male and I had no interest in any of it. But a real male would be kicked back with a beer watching football, not out careening around the mountains, most likely. At least, no males I ever knew.

 

I like to kick back with a beer and watch football myself. I also do a lot around the house though. I work rotating shifts and I'm at home by myself during the day a lot, so in addition to mowing the grass and making house repairs, I do 99% of the laundry and some of house cleaning. I cook a lot of the time too. My wife does more cooking and cleaning than I do, and none of the mowing or house repairs.

I don't get into decorating Christmas trees. I'm lousy with colors and decorating. I just put the star on top. I have done a lot of the Christmas shopping only because I have days off during the week (I also get seven consecutive days off every 6 weeks). I try to help with the christmas cooking sometimes but I just get in the way.

I just go along with it all bwcause of my wife and kids - I'm not religious by any means, but I like to see everyone else have a good time. If they wouldn't notice me gone, I'd be just as happy or happier sitting on top of a hill watching the clouds go by.

 

I just go along with it all bwcause of my wife and kids - I'm not religious by any means, but I like to see everyone else have a good time. If they wouldn't notice me gone, I'd be just as happy or happier sitting on top of a hill watching the clouds go by.[/QUOTE]

That's what's great..I have my life to myself now and no longer have to make anyone happy but myself. And that doesn't include cooking and cleaning and decorating, and etc.

My kids are grown and gone, busy with their lives and careers, my sibling family is scattered, each to a different state, my parents passed away in 2008 (I was helping taking care of them in the last few years) and I'm no longer with my "ex," but he's got someone so I don't have to worry about him.

Every day when I go outside and look toward the ocean and see the birds flying I feel like the luckiest person in the world. My ex did visit me in April and we went camping in the Ko Similan islands, but he'd not changed, so we parted as friends. I'm pretty happy as a single!

 

happy for those who actually enjoy them, and relieved of the stress of not having to expect and demand unreasonable things of myself.

a little big dissapointed that the two major forces in conflict over them, the mindlessness of some fanatacism, and the feeding frenzy of corporate retail, both so completely miss, what all of us individually can enjoy what they ought to be about.

as humans i feel that we've done a really dumb thing to imprison ourselves in cages of rectangular grids of pavement. that these machines which move under their own power, we carry on our backs, siphoning what what might otherwise enjoy of life.

how do i feel? do i feel? my thoughts are not about how i feel. and yet how i feel, what surroundes me is certainly an influence on my feelings.

so i tend to focus on the mechanism, the social mechanism, that makes that the way that it is.

i don't have anyone really close to me, to have that kind of a focus to be about.
if anyone things i should feel bad about that, well they're welcome to feel as ever they wish.

there are things, i love seeing snow on the ground. i love the smell of real pine needles.

i feel at this moment mostly at peace. and that is how i wish to feel, as often and for as long as it is humanly possible. not just for myself, but for anyone and everyone who might wish to feel this way also.

 

Aahh, freedom. It must be nice. Maybe now that you don't have to play wife, you might be able to find new enjoyment in the holidays. Maybe now your kids can cook for you.

 

:2thumbsup:

 

I enjoy the holidays. i hate shopping and fighting crowds of crazy consumer zombies, but I like spending time with my family. I like cooking and baking and decorating. I love all the old Christmas specials and classic Christmas movies. I love the weather this time of year too.
my groupnof friends and I do a secret santa thing and exchange homemade gifts a few weeks after Christmas - this is a huge part of my holiday experience and I probably look forward to it more than Christmas itself.

 

Ah, WCW..you are so sweet!

My 33-year-old son lives in LA, my 30-yr-old daughter lives in Lexington, Kentucky.

I live in Thailand, and I don't cook at all..don't even have a kitchen in my apartment. I buy fresh food daily from the semi-open Muslim market..drive through on motorbike. But I did have a great Christmas last year; I took a boat to the Similan Islands-the most western part of Thailand, in the Andaman Sea, camped on Ko Miang Island and photographed Nicobar Pigeons..they are only found there. A Green Turtle laid her eggs a few yards in front of my tent. I had so much fun I returned in April and got even more photos.
http://t.co/t1jhBYc7GO

 

I just like how it feels like everyone is on vacation from Thanksgiving until the New Year. Everyone is a little more laid back during the holidays..

 

That sounds like my kind of Christmas.

Also, those new pics are awesome.

 

That is one positive I see in favor of me - people are so laid back, I don't catch as much hell when I screw up.

 

What holiday/festival was that?

 

Thank you so much (which pics?) Well, I hope you have a great holiday season however you celebrate it

 

Wow! I'm glad there are folks who are into that..somebody has to do it. I do like it when it snows, though..more animal tracks to see in the woods in the morning, and years ago my kids and some of the neighborhood kids would attach lines to their plastic sleds and we'd gallop the horses up and down the holler road pulling them.

My daughter Jerielle at 8 yrs old galloping Black Jack, towing Nathan,10, on toy skis, Morehead, Kentucky in 1990 http://t.co/xQLSynSqr4

 

I was talking about the second link you posted.