Tis the Season

I work retail, and I have worked retail for 4 years give or take. To put it mildly, working retail ruins the Christmas season. I spent 3 of the 4 years in the giant mother of all retail stores: Wal-Mart. If that doesn't kill the holiday spirit, I don't know what does. This year I have tried and tried to get into the Christmas spirit. I made myself a mix CD of Christmas music I found on iTunes, but when I got to work and listened to Christmas music for 4 hours straight, I couldn't take any more of it.

When I was eating dinner with my folks tonight (I am staying with my parents during the holiday break) we were watching A Christmas Carol (Patrick Stewart version). While this is not my favorite version it did bring across a point to me that has been niggling at the back of my brain for the past month or so.

Whatever happened to just enjoying the holidays for what they are? The meaning of Christmas is not the gifts. It's about family and the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It's about friends and home. It's about being Christlike.

I promised myself I wouldn't get too preachy on my blog, so I will refrain from that. It's just hard these days to see past the glitter and commotion in the stores to find the true meaning of Christmas. Today I spent most of the day with my parents and my beautiful niece, topped it off with a nice evening with my parents, my best friend, and his girlfriend. That is what Christmas is all about. Being with those you love.

So this Christmas, with the economy the way it is, don't fret over STUFF and THINGS. Rather...enjoy the time you get to have with your family and friends...I will try and do the same.

Motivation or Lack Thereof

I told myself I would practice restraint and not write on my blog every day, but I couldn't resist. My fingers itch to write but my mind won't let me write anything to do with school or even my usual little short stories for that matter. What the heck is my problem?

I've been going to school straight through since last fall. For some, this is probably no big deal, but my brain does not function well without some sort of release. My summer semester was really fun, but it was also really hard. I had two of my hardest semesters right in a row: winter and summer. Winter was hard for several reasons. Summer was hard because I had the dreaded English 450 class in which I had to create a magazine from the ground up. It was a great time with a very steep learning curve. (I will try and see if I can post my magazine on here so you can take a gander).

That being said...I had very little brain left by the end of summer semester. And I still have one more semester to go and then I will graduate. I have to get over this funk before next semester which promises to be another tough one.

I feel like I'm just complaining in this post.

Sitting here, I was trying to grasp that ever-elusive motivation. Lately I've been thinking about how energetic and excited I used to get about school. Don't get me wrong; I love to learn and I'm actually going to miss having so much knowledge constantly at my fingertips. But it's like looking at two different people when I consider what I was like at the beginning of my undergrad career and what I am like now.