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It is December 23rd.

Today my mother and I will head to another part of the state to pick up our aunt to join us for Christmas. This is a tradition that we have had since my aunt decided she no longer felt safe driving the long distance herself. Before then, we will finish cleaning the house to my mom’s specifications. We have been spending the better part of the last week cleaning the house, with every member of my family seeking relief in their own way during the chaos to try to keep our morale up despite the extreme stress this has been causing us for as many years as some of us remember.

I tend to spend a lot of time thinking. It is quiet, private, and I can steal many moments between tasks to sit and think to help my mood. Many topics have run through my mind over the week. 

How many years has it been since we had snow on Christmas? Was it last year, or several years before that? 

How many years will I have to work before I can move out? 

Will I have enough energy to hang out with my friends for New Years? 

Will I be able to keep up with the things that bring me joy in the next year? 

How can I tell if someone is interested in dating me? 

(Am I even dateable?)

I’ve been thinking about sledding often. Years ago, my family used to try to make a habit of going to the local elementary school when there was snow on the ground and sledding down the school’s steep hill. It didn’t always work, but it was always fun, whether there was two or six inches of snow on the ground. We haven’t tried to go sledding in years, and that fun tradition has fallen by the wayside, along with many others that I used to look forward to. Holiday traditions feel more like a duty than a joy, causing the season to feel tedious. I’ve found myself often this year peering out at our dead yard, and thinking about family and climate change.

Adulthood does few things as well as complicating your relationships. They take more effort to upkeep, more initiative, more things get in the way. I find myself being more critical of my relationships from the amount of life experience I have, especially those with my family. I’ve basically given up talking to my aunt much. Somewhere along the road it feels like she decided she didn’t want to change her views anymore, and trying to carry a conversation with her feels like a chore. Neither of us enjoy it. To actually have a discussion with my father instead of just being talked at I feel like I have to have a ten page paper written up with scholarly sources to even get him to consider my point of view. I try to remember times that he simply believed me in the past, or just listened to my perspective and took it to heart. I can’t summon any to mind since I graduated high school. 

The strain weighs heavy on our household. By the winter solstice my brothers and I were ready to be done with the holiday season and move on. We were ready to have some time to recover and spend more time apart from each other. We know there will be some fun and joy along the way, there always is, but there’s an underlying tension that threatens to bubble up at the worst possible moment. We’ve seen it happen before and we know it will again, so we feel like we have to walk on eggshells and hope that we can get through the week without it blowing up in our faces. We are forced to ask ourselves: is this tension worth the brief moments of joy? How much longer do we have to worry about this? When will it change?

I try to catch the glimpses of joy that flit in and out of my week and hold onto them, so that I can remember them for next year. The food, the presents, the warmth, the thoughtfulness. How our parents let us celebrate in our own ways that they used to be against. The nostalgic movies, stories, and music that I get plenty of time to enjoy. How long my family manages to go without anyone yelling. 

I often work to convince myself that this won’t be forever. I have trained myself to believe that all things will pass, even if some things need more input from me to change than others. I hold that hope that at some point, more of that joy can return, and maybe even go back more to the way things used to be. All I need is more… Stability. Money. Determination. Research. Time. Then things will be how I remember, and holidays will be something to be proud of again.

But for this year, we have more days of long nights, busy hours, and tight voices. More days where I am rushing around trying to please everyone without needing to take a while on my own to cry again. Telling myself that all we have to do is to make it to New Years, and we can hope that everything will be better next year than it was this year. As long as I make it through, I can pray that I can enjoy spending time with my family again.

When you get this, answer one of the questions (or all if you really want!) then pass it on to 5 writer friends! 🥰 If you have more than one WIP, pick at random! We want you to talk about your works, and celebrate with you! ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

1. What are you most excited to write with this WIP?

2. How has this WIP changed since the “daydream/brainstorm” stage?

3. Who is your favorite character in this WIP and why?

Hey there! Thanks for the questions! I've been a bit busy lately so it took me a bit to get to this, but I always appreciate these!

I have a lot of wips so I'll talk about the one I've posted about most around here, the evolving backstory of Eighteen/Black Trenchcoat

What am I most excited to write with this WIP?

I've really been writing this story in pieces for a long time, thinking of events and things, so I'm most excited to just get things down on paper. If I were to pick out one thing, I think the thing I am ultimately most excited for is when the version of Eighteen I'm writing will match the one I carry the most in my head, after he's developed and finally gets the chance to reunite with his loved one. There's several scenes that I'm afraid I won't be able to portray emotionally enough to match what I see in my head, but that's why most of the things I put here are rough drafts! They're always in the process of being improved.

2. How has this WIP changed since the "day-dream" stage?

Honestly, all my WIPs sort of remain in the daydream stage. I tend to work through a lot of their major points in a detailed daydream before writing them down. I'm constantly day dreaming about them, thinking of more possibilities, thinking about character reactions. I've been day dreaming about this story for a long time, but the biggest thing that has changed is probably all the characters becoming more developed, gaining drives and relationships and hobbies. Every character I write now started as a one sentence concept at one point, or a single question, and they've all developed into multi faceted personalities since then. I day dreamed for a long time with one personality trait puppets, but now I write with 3-dimensional people, and it makes writing a lot more fun.

3. Who is my favorite character in this WIP?