Roy Tang

I usually prefer my holidays to be times of rest. Times to be free from work and stress, to indulge in things I like to do. I’ve just realized that Christmas is a rather stressful season.

For one thing, there’s the multitude of Christmas gatherings one has to attend. With family. With relatives. With friends. With friends of family. With coworkers. With coworkers who are friends. It’s not that I don’t enjoy myself at these gatherings mind you. In fact, lately I’ve found myself enjoying the company of other people more. It’s just that I’m not yet an entirely social person, and too many social gatherings too soon somewhat stretches the limits of my comfort zone.

Christmas is stressful. Everyone is busy, busy, busy. Going from place to place apparently, as the traffic has been horrible lately, with jams stretching well into the early morning.

Speaking of early morning, I left work close to midnight last night. We’ve been in crunch mode for the past two weeks or so, what with multiple deadlines coming up in January. Not that I can’t handle of course. But it doesn’t help that every other developer in one of my projects is going to be on vacation next week. Since I’ve had to run on pure genius these past few days, and as side effect, I was often more loud, sarcastic and smarmy than usual. To anyone who was annoyed by this, I apologize.

And the highlight of my last day of work before Christmas? Sometime before dinner I wrote a love letter and sent it by email to her. Nothing much, just telling her some things I wanted her to know, and greeting her for the holidays and stuff. I wasn’t expecting anything back, but I guess I got lucky. A few minutes before I left the office, I got a jabber message from her. To paraphrase:

her: boo!

her: thanks for the lovely letter :) me: I’m glad you liked it. my christmas is complete :)

There was more of course, a small exchange of pleasantries and even more holiday greetings. But I got that warm, fuzzy feeling again. Maybe Christmas this year wasn’t so bad after all. =)

Happy Holidays!