and difficult people become mor difficult this time of year too

“It’s rain­ing. Bet­ter go 40 mph.”
—every­one on I‑5 earlier
 

This is the time of year when we should all be sleep­ing in late and quit­ting work ear­ly and go­ing to bed ear­ly and sav­ing our resources. 

Our mon­ey, our time, our en­er­gy, our effort. 

Eat­ing com­fort­ing food and be­ing warm and com­fort­able and hav­ing what I call “qui­et time.”

Some­times when it gets late and Aaron wants to stay up, I tell him I’m go­ing up­stairs be­cause not only am I get­ting tired but I also need to have “qui­et time.”

No noise, low lights, my en­tire body re­lax­ing in bed, maybe I dink around on my phone read­ing about some ran­dom bird on Wikipedia. 

It took him a while to un­der­stand that it wasn’t about him. I just need­ed that. He loves be­ing near me so now if I go up­stairs and he still wants to play his Steam Deck, he uses his headphones. 🩵

We all need qui­et time and this aw­ful so­ci­ety we’ve craft­ed doesn’t al­low for it. 

We have two in­sane hol­i­days bare­ly a month apart dur­ing the dark­est time of year. 

In­stead of cel­e­brat­ing the sol­stice and all of the things it sym­bol­izes we are pres­sured into spend­ing mon­ey we don’t have on crap no­body needs out of a sense of oblig­a­tion to ghosts of the past. 

“Tra­di­tion” can be love­ly but it can also be tox­ic as hell. 

And it’s not even just this aw­ful, stu­pid Amer­i­can form of cel­e­brat­ing this hol­i­day. It’s also a pu­ri­tan­i­cal at­ti­tude to­ward work for the sake of fur­ther­ing late stage capitalism. 

Push your body and your heart and mind to the ex­treme lim­it so some­one else can buy an ex­tra yacht or lux­u­ry car or an­oth­er house on a vineyard. 

Push, even though it’s time to rest and recharge and na­ture is try­ing to tell us that. 

We don’t listen. 

Every­one was sad when COVID forced us to stay home and for­go the usu­al (al­though many peo­ple did any­way and we paid the price). It’s fun­ny, now peo­ple are com­plain­ing again about all the things they have to do.

We have a re­al­ly un­healthy re­la­tion­ship with oblig­a­tion and guilt. We look back on tu­mul­tuous events with rose col­ored glass­es and keep putting our­selves through the grinder with lit­tle to show for it oth­er than debt, de­pres­sion, ex­haus­tion, and resentment. 

I try to find things I can like about this time of year. For me it’s a sur­vival in­stinct. It’s what I’ve al­ways done my en­tire life when­ev­er I’m in a sit­u­a­tion that sur­rounds me, I can’t es­cape from, and I can’t re­al­ly change on a macro level. 

As I get old­er I’ve got­ten bet­ter about set­ting and re­in­forc­ing bound­aries and say­ing no. Some peo­ple don’t like it but I don’t give a fuck, they can pound sand.

The dark­est day of the year is to­mor­row, and I have no plans that day. 

Thank­ful­ly I also don’t have to work, be­cause it’s Sat­ur­day. I’m go­ing to em­brace it. The dark­ness isn’t al­ways a bad thing. Some­times it’s try­ing to re­mind us to slow down and rest. Af­ter that, things will grad­u­al­ly get lighter again. 

At least lit­er­al­ly if not figuratively.

 

—emi­ly duchaine

Flom­mist Emi­ly Duchaine lives in the Pa­cif­ic North­west. She likes to drink mead, learn about sharks, and lis­ten to the Talk­ing Heads. She pre­tends to be a pro­fes­sion­al busi­ness­woman most days. Copy­right © 2024 Emi­ly Duchaine.

PLEASE   SUPPORT   FLOMM
TIPS  +  DONATIONS  DISCREETLY  ACCEPTED

FLOMM
promotes learning  +  education worldwide
drawing attention to works by nü  +  upcoming artists,
designers, writers, musicians  +  MOR

OUR INVOLVEMENT
– however –
is mostly paid for out of pocket or in trade

IF YOU ENJOY
wat  FLOMM  is doing here, please consider


1.   LEAVE US A TIP  :
use our tip jar whenever the mood hits



2.   BUY OUR SWAG  :
our approach is semi-green —
                all our  FLOMMHAUS  merch is made to order



3.   HELP US OUT  :
use our hashtags  #flomm  #flommus  #whereisflomm  #nüflommart  #flommist
when posting on ur socials —
or drop us a note and offer to help in some way
everything we do is on a volunteer basis —
             when we say  YOU CAN BE A FLOMMIST TOO  this is wat we mean

THANK YOU
your support helps our continued efforts
to create content across numerous platforms

clic 「 HIER   」 to return to the DER TUNG front page