First Christmas home

I have never been so busy in my life. When I say busy, I mean exhausted. In the past, I’ve had plenty of time to sleep or pursue my interests, or even just go a day without putting make up on. I did not realize how spoiled I was. Working various part time jobs may have impacted my paycheck, but it always left me with this feeling that I hadn’t reached my “peak” yet; there was more to be done on the horizon.

Now, I have this great full-time opportunity at an amazing nonprofit and I’ve come to realize a few things:

• I need to work freelance
• I hate working 9-5
• I’d like to make more money
• If this weren’t a temporary position before going to grad school, I wouldn’t be here long

But I also love my job. I love the people I work with. I love doing what I do. I really really love my job. I also love that this is temporary and directional.

I would like to keep in mind that I’ve been going to school full-time and working full-time and completing grad school apps all at once. Going forward, I’ve completed my degree (as of this week), and submitted my first application. I submit my second (and 1st choice school) in the next week or so. That’s 2/4 schools done. My next submissions aren’t until February. I’m so grateful and happy. I used the “future memory” of graduation to get me through these last few months and boy, now that it’s here, it’s exactly what I thought it would feel like.

The best news is that my mom is experiencing her first set of holidays home.

I think because I’ve never known what I was missing, I just sort of assumed the holidays would always suck. I assumed that every awkward gathering would always be awkward. I assumed that every visit would be a full-blown interrogation. This year is already different. There are no uncomfortable, direct questions about her. My life has suddenly become my own.

What’s stranger still is that I’ve been enlightened to how cool my family is and I never knew that before. Last night after we went to my brother’s grandparent’s house, in the car ride home, I was able to ask her about the bloodline relationships that had never made sense to me. She told me stories about my hard-ass relatives that made me laugh and smile. Suddenly, those 2D people became dynamic characters in my life story. I’ve already got mental plans to ask them to lunch. I’m curious to know them better.

I’d never before understood how vital family history is to personal identity. It amazes me how incomplete I felt before she got home, all the ways I’d tried to fill myself up or redefine who I was. It makes sense why I felt the urge to do that now. I really was missing something I couldn’t understand. My holiday gifts have been invaluable this year.