Tomorrow is the darkest day of the year. It’s the winter
solstice. We only get about 4-5 hours of daylight. The day after tomorrow we
start the the journey towards increasingly longer days. That’s good.
Also, we are approaching Christmas. That’s not so good. I’m
not into the religious part of it, and the commercialism just makes me sad. I
try to keep it on a very minimum. When I enter the malls with Christmas-pop-music
on the loud speakers (Jingle Bell Rock, Santa Claus is Coming to Town) and people
running around carrying bags full of stuff, it makes me feel sick.
The only place I feel fairly comfortable is the bookstore.
So that’s where I try to do most of my shopping.
It’s been a rush at
work as usual. Projects and reports need to be finished before the end of the
years. Managers sitting with there Excel spreadsheets counting deliverables,
worrying about the KPI’s.
If you don’t know what a KPI is, you’re lucky. KPI means Key
Performance Indicator. That’s the measures by which managers can maximize their
bonuses, by local optimization in their little pond, and private agendas. At
the same time they usually harm the overall interest of the company. But who
cares. This is competition. This is the wonderful capitalist world.
Whatever, it’s great with two weeks of vacation, skiing in
the mountains.
I hope I get the book by Thomas Piketty for Christmas. If
not, I buy it on sale in January.
Happy winter solstice >:)
(Picture from my archives, from a past Christmas, in 2010 or 2011 I think. We have less snow this year, but thanks to efficient snow making system, the skiing is not at risk)
It was really dark out this morning, although thankfully we are farther south and have longer daylight hours.
ReplyDeleteI don't even venture to to stores around Christmas. Online shopping rocks. Not letting crowds and commercialism ruin my Reason for the Season.
We all have our Reason for the Season (good term). Mine is quite simple; vacation in the snow. No matter what reason we have, it seems like everybody dislike the commercial pressure
DeleteI don't do christmas at all. And I avoid as much of it as possible.
ReplyDeleteIf I could I would do the same. However, being part of a family it's practically impossible. A minimum if Christmas is forced upon me
DeleteI heard they were making snow in Albany, too. Weird...
ReplyDeleteHappy Solstice.
It's alchemy; making the white gold >;)
DeleteYour December posts are the same every year... ;-) But "each coin has two sides" we say in my language. There are definitely worse things in our modern society than the commercial way of celebrating Christmas, I think. So cheer up dude and enjoy skiing and your kids!
ReplyDeleteChristmas is the same commercial shit every year. But ad long as the skiing is good, its possible to survive >:)
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