I'm not sure how many of you know this but I lost my father to cancer almost three years ago. My wife lost her father to cancer earlier this year. Needless to say the thought of sharing Thanksgiving and X-Mas without our fathers has not been a pleasant one. While we each have our own separate issues the end result is pretty much the same, depression.
My father wasn't the kind of guy who celebrated the holidays. He didn't even like celebrating his birthday. I get that from him actually. My wife's father celebrated the holidays with energy and vigor. While he was alive we had a reason to look forward to the holidays again. Now that he's gone we'd rather stay home and pretend they never happened.
My heart really aches though, for those that have to work over the holidays to satiate corporate greed. I worked retail for a number of years and having to work during this season really sucked ass. The worst part was always having to argue with the district managers, the regional managers about having time off versus somehow managing to squeeze those extra few dollars out of shoppers pockets. If that wasn't bad enough the shoppers themselves then lambast the workers with anger and frustration at not finding their chosen deal after waiting for who knows how long to get it. The worst part is that after all of this stress no one really gets what they want. Sales are always lower than hoped, deals always vanish before the customer can get them and the workers never get to spend badly needed time with their families. Its a no-win situation no matter who you are. Being a retail worker this time of year is nothing short of a GOD DAMNED NIGHTMARE and I really wish it would end for the sake of all of us.
I don't want to say that I'm not grateful for anything because I am. I'm grateful to have a happy, wonderful marriage with the most amazing little girl you will ever meet (She's our daughter so I'm a little biased) and a fantastic job that understands how to treat bottom tier workers. I'm grateful for the opportunity to spread my love of comics to the world by creating comics of my own and above all else I'm grateful to the people in my life for granting me the privilege of being a part of my life and allowing me to be a part of theirs.
So yeah, the holiday season is bittersweet for us. If it was up to me we'd ignore it all and just go about our lives as always but its not up to me. We've got to make the best of it however we can.
