Playlist: November 2015

I'll admit that I felt a little weird creating a holiday themed playlist this month. I mean, we literally just celebrated Thanksgiving (though I know some stores have been decorated for Christmas for at least 3 weeks or longer).

I was originally going to save this playlist to post next month before Christmas, but changed my mind when I realized that it might be nice to have this playlist available throughout the month of December. 

But this isn't just any holiday playlist. It's a playlist featuring some of my favorite bands and artists (so, sorry, no Mariah Carey or anything like that!) performing both classic Christmas songs and other winter/holiday related songs. I know it may not be everyone's thing, but I'm hoping it will put me in the holiday spirit. (And I'll probably need that extra holiday cheer as I attempt to make it through the next few weeks at work before heading off to spend the holiday with my family in West Virginia. It's always rough when you know a vacation is coming up!)

Hopefully others will get something out of this as well, though. You never know ... You might discover a new seasonal favorite!

And, because it wasn't available on Spotify, here's one more:

That Death Cab cover of "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" is probably my favorite Christmas song, so I obviously couldn't leave it off the playlist completely!

What are some of your less traditional holiday music favorites?

Random Valentine's Day Thoughts

As I'm sure everyone knows, Valentine's Day was last Saturday.  If you're curious about the way we celebrated (or, more accurately, didn't celebrate), the day began with Criminal Minds on Netflix and bowls of cereal.  I later finished reading The Pilo Family Circus, then took a shower and got ready.  We went to Half Price Books for some book shopping (I had a 20% off coupon), and after spending about an hour or so in the store, I found 4 books and Eric found 1.  It was only about $32 for all 5 books, so I was pretty happy about that!  After the bookstore, we went to the grocery store to pick up a few things.  Eric made some delicious bacon guacamole burgers for dinner, and I didn't take a picture because I'm a bad blogger.  We watched several episodes of Friends (somehow we're already on season 5!), and then I had a Skype date with a couple of my girlfriends who moved away last year.  I drank way too much wine (1.5 bottles, to be exact), and had a blast catching up for 6 hours.  I went to bed around 3:00 a.m., drunk and happy.

Eric and I aren't really fans of Valentine's Day, so this obviously wasn't treated as a special day for romance.  It was, however, a really great day spent with a few of my favorite people (even if I only got to see 2 of them via Skype).

The lighting is terrible in this picture, but it's the only one I took on Valentine's Day this year.  I took this right before the Skype date began.

I wouldn't say we're anti-Valentine's Day, but we've never considered it to be a special holiday worth celebrating.  I know that a lot of people love it, but we just ... Don't.

Eric and I made our relationship official in June 2007, so we'd been dating for 8 months by the time our first Valentine's Day together rolled around.  (You can read all about how we met here, if you're interested.)  Even then, we weren't really interested in making a big deal out of it.  Back in 2008, we agreed to just make cards for one another.  That's it.  No flowers, no candy, no special candlelit dinner, and, most importantly, no pressure!

Unfortunately, other people felt the need to make up for this lack of pressure by providing pressure of their own.  Every time someone asked what we were doing for Valentine's Day and I said, "Nothing really ... We're just making each other cards," I'd get a response like, "I would be so pissed if my boyfriend didn't do anything for me!"  I'd then explain that we didn't really want to make a big deal out of Valentine's Day, so we'd agreed that making something small for each other seemed like the best way to celebrate.  It's weird that other people cared so much about what we did (or didn't) do for Valentine's Day, but, for whatever reason, they did.

Eric put it best when he said, "Valentine's Day is supposed to be a celebration of love, but I think you can show love any day of the year."  I obviously managed to snag a smart man!

I guess my main point here is that Valentine's Day doesn't have to be a big thing, regardless of whether or not you're in a relationship.  I get that some people just really like holidays or enjoy any excuse for a celebration ... But some of us don't.  And that's okay.

I realize this post was mostly a bunch of random thoughts about Valentine's Day (and a selfie because, well, why not?), so I'll leave you with this very old picture of Eric and me.  This was taken in the summer of 2007, about a month or so after we made things official.  It was his first trip to visit me (if you've read some of my older posts, you may remember that we were in a long distance relationship for a little over 2 years before I moved to Omaha), and I'd taken him for a walk in my favorite park.  Aww, young love (and proof that I should probably always have bangs!).

Eric doesn't really like this picture because he's squinting, but it's one of the earliest pictures of us I could find so I wanted to share it in this post.

If anyone feels like commenting, please feel free to share your thoughts on Valentine's Day.  Are you a fan, or is it just another day for you?

When Christmas Loses Its Magic

When I first started to write this post, I wasn't sure how I should go about it (or if I should even publish it at all).  I didn't want to write the most depressing Christmas related post ever, and I didn't want the post to read like a journal entry.  But every time I started to write, that's exactly what would come out: really long depressing paragraphs worthy of my LiveJournal circa 2005-2006.  Trust me when I say that no one wants to read that.

I then decided I'd turn the post into a list.  I think the things I wanted to share will be a little easier to digest if I write them out this way (versus rambling on and on about a bunch of random shit).

Below you will find some of the reasons why Christmas has lost its magic for me.  I'm sure I'll still ramble a little, but hopefully the list format somehow makes my thoughts seem slightly more organized.

Image provided by Unsplash (unsplash.com) and edited by me.

1.  I made the choice to move away from my family.  I was never happy living in my hometown, and I always knew I wanted to move away (even at a young age).  It just wasn't the right place for me.  If I'm being completely honest, the only things I ever miss about it are my family and close friends who still live in the area.  I know that moving away was the best thing for me, and I've never regretted it.  That being said, I sometimes get really depressed around Christmas because it's not always feasible for me to fly to my hometown to spend that time with my family.  I may have chosen to move halfway across the country, but that doesn't mean I don't get to feel at least a little sad when I can't spend time with my family.

2.  Eric and I haven't really created any Christmas traditions yet.  (Well, Christmas traditions for the two of us as a family.)  This is generally okay with me since we do a lot of stuff with his family for the holidays and I'm not sure if I want to add on even more stuff.  However, since we don't even decorate our apartment, exchange gifts on Christmas day, or do any other special things, it just feels like any other day.  I will say that this year we're planning to make a special holiday dinner for the two of us (which I'm really looking forward to!), so hopefully that will help make the day feel a little more like Christmas and less like a random weekend day spent around the apartment in pajamas.

3.  As an adult, holidays in general become more stressful.  But Christmas?  Christmas is a fucking nightmare.  I know I stress myself out more than I need to because I'm such an awful procrastinator when it comes to buying gifts, but I think I'd still be stressed even if I finished my shopping in September.  I used to love giving gifts, but I think it's gotten more difficult to come up with thoughtful and unique ideas ... So I usually default to a gift card.  Don't get me wrong ... There's nothing wrong with a gift card.  In fact, I think I sometimes prefer that to an actual gift because I can go shopping at a later time when I think of something I really want or need.  (And I know some of the people I exchange gifts with feel this way as well.)  However, that doesn't change the fact that I used to pride myself on giving awesome gifts for Christmas and now it's like, "Merry Christmas!  Here's a gift card because I couldn't come up with anything better for you."  Yes, it's harder to buy gifts for people you don't see every day, but I still feel guilty when I go for the gift cards.

4.  I think the main reason I feel like Christmas has lost much of its appeal, though, is because I can no longer spend it with my grandparents.  They were very important, very special people in my life, and now that they're both gone it's hard to imagine going on with the holiday traditions without them.  I actually haven't been back to my hometown for Christmas since 2008 ... My grandmother passed away the following month.  (My grandfather passed away in May.)  I've almost been too afraid to go back for Christmas because I know it won't be the same.  Every year we'd spend Christmas at their house and share a huge, delicious meal that included my mom's awesome cheesy potato casserole and my grandmother's famous red velvet cake.  (Okay, it was just famous in our family ... But it was amazing and one of the highlights of the meal!)  I'm thankful I was able to spend so many years getting to know them and that I have so many wonderful memories, but I still miss them all the time.  And it's even harder to deal with around Christmas (especially now that they're both gone).

I hope that one day Christmas will regain at least some of its magic.  But for now, it has to just be another day for me because if I focus too much on the holiday itself and how much I miss the years I spent with my family when I was younger, I may never stop crying.