life without a plot

Second day of Christmas baking. I've come home exhausted and vowing never to touch another Christmas cookie again before, but this year for the first time I never really enjoyed it to begin with; just another... duty, almost, something to be done; except - what (whom) for, exactly? Or why? Because I've been doing it for the last 30 or so years of my life?

(Also, don't try the cookie thing with a 13 months old kid around. I love my niece, but, gah. It's impossible to get any work done with anything approaching efficiency.)

I usually love finding & giving gifts, but this year I wish I could (not that my job lets me) just forget about the whole Christmas thing altogether. I haven't bought anything for anyone so far, I don't know when I will, and really don't particularly want to. I wish I had the money and time to take a few weeks off & a plane to some sunny, warm beach somewhere where Christmas isn't celebrated. Or heard of, if that is at all possible.

I'm so tired of it all. Mostly I'm tired of all the repetition and sameness in my life.

The therapist always tells me to focus on what's positive in my life, myself. Now that's something that's hard to find/see at the best of times, and something I can't really seem to influence either (the perception, that is; either I see/feel it, or I don't), but it increasingly seems a wasted effort, because when I'm not putting up a facade for other people, but being honest with myself instead there isn't anything. I'm 35, and what I'm doing is sitting at my computer listening to NIN & writing a livejournal entry which is 2/3 whinebithchmylifesucks and 1/3 fanishness. Before that I was watching an episode of Smallville. Before that, baking Christmas cookies for no other reason that because I've always done it. Tomorrow I'll return to the same crappy job I've been whining about for years. My four years younger sister has a boyfriend, a child and a dissertation that's more or less finished. How is that life not a failure? How is that worth anything? Because it isn't.


Eh.


Also, while we're talking about immaturity & pointless life time wasting?

Don't do this to me, Smallville. I finally dug out the S5 box set I bought ages ago & never watched, because Christmas-stress induced brain-deadness seemed like a good state of mind to approach this. And, predictably, crap. And not improved by James Marsters. [Insert redundant rant about this show's wasted potential.] Until the Christmas episode, which, just, guh. Heartbreak. I might have sniffed a bit. Oh, Lex. Episodes like this leave me semi-convinced that someone does actually know what they're doing, because the characterisation was absolutely stringent for once instead of all over the place as usual. I've been randomly scribbling down thoughts during the earlier episodes and it seemed pretty obvious that Lex is looking for power because the one thing he's afraid of (and not entirely unjustified, growing up in this family), is to be powerless and at someone's mercy. So it's actually nice to hear that the show's creators and I are on the same page here, because most of the time I suspect the characterisation I see in my head exists only there. I don't think I've ever seen Michael Rosenbaum in anything else, so I really have no idea how good an actor he is when he's not on SV, but there he's very good indeed. Or can be, if they actually give him enough screen-time and development do something with his character...