Opening

Love. This diary is the Christmas gift I chose to give to myself today. I was not anticipating doing such a thing – I had imagined a more joy-filled family Christmas, but my stubborn refusal to acknowledge a particular limitation of mine provoked me into an unnecessary anti-social display that lasted longer than I find acceptable. Despite my good intentions, I am not a good gift giver. This frustrates my spouse, who is a good gift giver and also feels loved by receiving a good gift. It has been a problem in our marriage. I don’t foresee any significant improvement in my abilities at any point in the future, and so I’ve had to create new rules for myself to hopefully alleviate the behavior. This approach has only shown to be moderately successful in the past; past rule groupings that I discover are usually too narrowly defined and so do not encompass the particular social norm that is expected, and sometimes it is still difficult to know if a new rule is solidly nailed to my new self or anchored firmly in the Sierpinski’s disappearing triangle of my old self. I know I still have some scaffolding between them, but I’m hoping to set the old one adrift every day. Amen.