Spending Christmas Day and New Years alone

I went for a drive today over the top of Thorpe-Orinoco Road which takes one onto Dovedale road and then left to traverse gravel road and further pine covered forestry hill roads until one ends up arriving at Wakefield township. I stopped for a cappuccino and steak sandwich at the Rhubarb Cafe where I also took some observational notes in my notebook.

I was the only person at the cafe on my own. But this is what my life is, and I'm okay with that. After all, it's not like I don't ever go out and meet new people, or even reach out to old friends. But there is only so much reaching out one can do before it becomes too much to keep reaching out and have no one reach back.

So I sat in comfort as people around me talked, met, and ate together. My hand scribbled descriptive words occasionally on the page pretending prose like poetry was perfection. I knew it wasn't though, but at least I was writing. I had planned to walk up to the top of Thorpe-Orinoco Road and sit up there at midnight looking out at the stars, but cloud cover and dribbles of rain put an end to that idea.

On Christmas Day I had no interactions with any human beings (at least in the flesh - not sure if I made any comments online anywhere). I spent the day not celebrating a day of the year that other people deem necessary to buy presents  and eat copious amounts of food on, but celebrating myself. Me. Warwick Stubbs. The person that's made it this far through life: battling depression and suicidal thoughts as a teenager into my early twenties, losing friends, losing jobs, struggling to understand how I can't make music work for me when I have all these songs to give to the world... This person had a moment to himself, a day of relaxation, sunbathing in 24° temperatures, playing guitar without concern for who I might be annoying, ironing some shirts, drinking wine my landlord had left for me, sitting in the garden listening to Welcome Swallows, Tui, and finches flutter their wings and call bird whistles through the heat. I enjoyed every moment of it like I had never enjoyed Christmas before.

The truth is that I had never enjoyed or got anything out of Christmas since my late teens. It has for many years felt an extremely hollow day with fabricated meaning as though people can't seem to find it in themselves to garner any of this good will on 'non-calendar' days of the year.

So a day to myself was one of the most refreshing and rejuvenating things I could have done on this day when other people celebrate being with other people. I celebrated being on my own.