The holidays are fast approaching, and that means my holiday anxiety is ramping up. As usual, one of the high stress points for me is trying to come up with a Xmas list of things for myself. At any other time during the year, I'd have no problem rattling off a veritable cornucopia of gift ideas, but now - forget it.
I desperately need to develop a hobby that involves lots of small moving parts. For a while, home automation was my hobby, and I could easily say "Just get me a lamp module or an appliance module", and I'd be happily turning on and off all of the lights in the house, to the great annoyance of Allison and the neighbors. Now I have to take up model railroad building or pinball machine restoration or something like that - except that I don't feel like I have the time for those kind of pursuits.
The flip side of the Xmas coin is, of course, buying gifts (although isn't that Santa's job? What gives?) Well, isn't it supposed to be better to give than to receive? My problem is that I hate shopping. I hate leaving the house, getting into the car, driving up to the mall, finding what I am looking for (in the rare case that I actually know what I'm looking for, that is [and for you grammarians out there, replace "am looking for" with "seek"]), waiting in line to buy it, potentially hiding it when I get it home, and wrapping. Other than that, I find the giving experience pleasant. Did I mention that I feel like I don't have any spare time lately?
Of course, I actually do have spare time, and probably quite a lot of it compared to those of you with kids. The problem is that I want to spend it on me. Unfortunately, "me time" doesn't sit well on someone's Xmas list.
Hey, it just occurred to me that computer gaming has lots of small moving parts. Ok, most of those parts happen to be electrons, but they are moving very fast, so that makes up for their tiny size. So I guess that some "me time" to play with a computer simulation of a malfunctioning pinball machine with a model railroad motif would be the perfect gift. For me. For you - um, expect a melon baller wrapped in aluminum foil. That's all that'll be left by the time I get around to shopping.
You can respond to my ranting here.
For fools rush in where angels fear to rant.