An honest assessment of a tetchy Christmas

I'm going to level with you. I didn't enjoy Christmas this year.

I thought I was in a good place in the run up, but it turns out I wasn't as on form as I reckoned. There wasn't anything that happened to cause distress and it wasn't the company of friends and family. They were great.

It was entirely my ability to deal stuff that did for me. I was tired. I was tetchy. I reacted badly to people, created tension and I really didn't like it one bit. So then I compounded it all by beating myself up about it. All in my own head, not talking it through with people.

All of that meant that one of the things I enjoyed most about the break it was taking down the decorations down to signal the end of it all. And that's not something I'm remotely proud of.

But a major positive I can take from the experience is that I at least had the self-awareness to realise what's happened and to try to better manage the situation in the future.

I don't do New Year's resolutions - the timing of this blog is completely coincidental in that regard - but I want to share the thought process I've been going through and the changes I've started to implement in my world to help make my future a more contented place.

Climbing out of a festive rut

For years, Christmas for me has been a time of inertia and stress. I go blank when it comes to present ideas, forget everything I know about people's interests and end up doing nothing until too late in the day.

The outcome is the stereotypical bloke's last minute, panicked shopping trips and Amazon Prime deliveries arriving right down to the wire. And that's despite the fact my wife covers all the ground buying for friends and family.

It bugs me but I've really struggled to change my way of thinking and this year was no different. And, I'm ashamed to say, the same happens when it comes to birthdays too.

But I think it's actually something more deeply seated. I have a tendency to disengage from life on a regular basis, to withdraw and seek solace thoughts and I don't think that's always helpful. Irrespective of the time of year, I want to be more more engaged, aware and, quite frankly, feel more useful to those around me.

So, the first thing I want to do is tackle this. Not only will it make me feel and be more useful and engaged with the occasions, it will mitigate so much stress in the build-up if I can nail this.

Presence not presents

The way I'm going to tackle this is by trying my best to realise and resist my default behaviours under these kind of circumstances. That's much easier said than done, because it doesn't seem tangible left like this.

I think the path to achieving this is to look at the things hindering my ability to become more engaged in day to day life and re-consider how I can tackle them one by one.

For me, the elephant in the room is alcohol. Like many, many people, over the years I've used it as a way to relax, to ease myself into social occasions and I'd be lying if I said I'd never thought about cutting back. The trouble has been that I've had neither the confidence, self-respect or will to do it.

But something has clicked for me in recent weeks. It's a realisation that the short-term, on the night gain of drinking - however much or little that may be - is no longer worth the day after slog, the impact of broken sleep and the struggle to focus. All those things that contribute directly to presence of mind.

And if there's one thing I know about this Christmas, it's that I certainly embraced the social aspect of the period. My sleep tracker showed an average of just 5 hours a night in December, so it's no wonder I felt shot.

So I've stopped drinking. Forever. Not for a defined period of time and not only at weekends or whatever other rules I could adopt. I've decided that, although I'm doing my very best to embrace the grey areas of life and avoid black and white distinctions, this one is an exception. It is and all or nothing scenario and I have everything to gain by seeing it through.

I had my last drink a few days before the end of 2019 so it's early days, but I've already been through a New Year's Eve party without a hint of wavering, for what that's worth. This is not a panacea, but it's definitely going to help,

It feels incredibly cheesy to say it, but this might just be the biggest gift I've given myself. It certainly feels like it at the moment.