Dec ‘24 – The challenges of the holiday period

My first festive period single for 8 years. I am not sure I can honestly say I dreaded it any the less then when I was in a relationship. No long Xmas lunch with partner and her family drinking for 10 hours; less presents to buy; no new year’s eve party all massive results! Not having someone to keep me company in betwixmas – much harder.

It’s a strange time of year especially for people that don’t really celebrate Christmas. For me that challenge is about the loss of routine. What am I going to do? What do I want to do? The latter of those two questions always feels particularly hard to answer when most the time I don’t really feel much pull to do anything.

But somehow I did galvanise myself to at least make some arrangements. Low key lunch and dinner on Christmas Day. A guided walk, a friend and another friend the day after. Padel tennis, film, date, show. Saving up work so I’d have something to do during the days. Motivation is still hard, but enough stuff to avoid spending a whole week in bed not doing anything. It’s not easy though.

I’m struck more and more these days at how reluctant I am to step out of routine. Going on holiday or taking a chunk of time off work feels….abhorrent? Unmanageable? Too difficult? But then too much routine just gets boring and I want some excitement. A part of me hopes that finding a new partner will create that excitement even though I know the excitement of a new relationship is short lived. Then you have to deal with all the challenges of the differences between two people.

Dating seems to occupy a big chunk of my headspace, and my own self-worth seems very tied to the success I have in the dating arena. Over the last six months I seem to have been fairly successful in getting a number of first dates, very unsuccessful in getting to the second. Which definitely leaves me feeling fairly undesirable, on top of my own inner feeling that nobody in their right mind would want to be in a long term relationship with me.

Every time I go on a date with a woman I like, where I feel that ‘like’ is not reciprocated, I come home and curl up in bed for a few hours, too downhearted to do anything. But dating, and love, really does necessitate leaning-in to the feeling of loss or rejection.

But despite that I don’t feel two pessimistic about the coming year. I try to push the negative thoughts aside and instead focus on the task of getting dates, and hoping I find somebody I like enough, and who likes me enough, for that to progress. I’m not pessimistic about work, although it really is a very important year for my company, and if we don’t have some sales success this year any optimism I feel will quickly disappear.

So soldier on is what I will do, and work hard. Hoping my company will make enough money to repay my mortgage. I always seem to feel a bit more cheerful in January because the festive period is behind me. In the northern hemisphere the days are getting longer, and I feel like it’s only three months until spring. Not that I look forward to the summer any more because my golf is so bad I don’t enjoy that either!

Bloody hell I’m so miserable these days! Finding something to look forward to is really difficult, but I still want to achieve certain things, and I have just enough motivation to work towards them. Still in the game, battling through each day. Feeling more and more that the majority of my days are behind me, and I’m running out of time, to avoid feeling full of regret as I get older. But that is some motivation in itself.

I’m sure I should be leaving a message of hope to all readers of this. The truth is, most of the time I don’t feel massively hopeful. But I do carry on, and do have some hope that life can fill less grey than it currently does. So that’s something, right?