PLACEHOLDER: DECEMBER 23, 2022, NORTH AUGUSTA SOUTH CAROLINA USA

I've taken "Christmas week" off maybe twice before, in 30 years of teaching #guitar. Every year I haven't - most years - I set a reminder on my phone to "TAKE THE WEEK OFF NEXT YEAR, DAMMIT" because ultimately half of my students usually cancel, and I'm just sitting around while "Christmas" is happening outside my lesson studio.

You know (maybe?): people running around in public, wearing tacky "Christmas" clothes, Christmas decorations seen everywhere, the occasional "Merry Christmas!" or "happy holidays!" spoken.

And my parents were alive and trying hard to make their household environment something like what I remember as a little kid in the 70s/80s.

I stayed inside my little office, waiting for the inevitable "Chip, I thought I was going to make lessons today but (reason)" text to come in. Then it's finally Christmas, a flurry of activity, #NewYears, back to work. Rinse and repeat.

This year I just did it, "no, sorry, no guitar lessons Christmas week". I thought I'd have plenty of time to rearrange the disaster area of the room here where I give online guitar lessons, that I hurriedly setup back in March 2020 when we pretended to shut down. It looks like a cross between a hoarder and a music store after an earthquake where I'm sitting.

But things have come up, little catastrophes. It's now Friday and I'm wasting time typing this. There are a number of pressing matters; I should know by now in this timeline the #Matrix isn't going to allow anything to work out.

But I can't even walk through the Mart of Wal, or Kroger, and see Happy Shiny People in seemingly "normal" holiday mode. I could, but it would be dumb; and it's wrecked now knowing that around half are probably ghoulish sociopaths that don't care who gets sick around them, and probably are ruminating about how Christmas would be better if the Dreaded Hunter Biden was in jail, or (as happened earlier) are ready to "tell" me how #covid is over and I shouldn't have that "useless" #mask on my face.

Everything just feels messed up. I remember when this crap wasn't in my head. One of those previous 2 times I took Christmas off, I recorded my music almost the whole week, made a cd that was fairly profitable by mail order of all things (pre-MP3/Napster/Spotify). There seemed to be time to get a tree, to consider buying gifts, to go to Christmas drop-ins, make the rounds. I kind of remember that. Maybe one day there will be a broad spectrum coronavirus vaccine that neutralizes, the anti-vaxxers can skip it, but the rest of us can have a legitimate, truly normal mind-bias this time of year.

I hope the ice storm doesn't make the power go out this weekend, among other things.

Frak. Sorry to anyone that read this far, lol.

#MerryChristmas #HappyHannukah #MerryKwanzaa #HappyHolidays