✨ group hug

If you had asked me even 3 years ago about holiday cards there would have been some very salt language involved. What started maybe 10 years ago as a fairly contained exercise had turned into an overwhelming, unwieldy thing that got me into fights with my husband, made me feel like an always behind failure and just generally sucked.

And yet, I kept going. I obviously had the very reasonable choice of not doing them. But if I really thought about it, I realized that I actually very much valued the idea behind a holiday card. This yearly ritual to reach out to friends and in turn be sent missives.

It was the whole process that wasn't working for me.

And so a change.

Instead of trying to check a box by outsourcing everything and trying to have the cards addressed and stamped for me, I went back to basics. A smaller list of name and addresses that the family would find time to all address together. Each 30 seconds having the added bonus of thinking of that family for that time.

That act of simplification and connecting the to meaning behind the task has completely transformed the work from something that I dreaded and moaned about to something that feels joyful, if full of work.

And on the other side of it, the fruits of our labour - a wall of windows filled with the faces and stories of our friends, from every corner of the world. And on our fridge, the story of us, told in yearly snippets.

So much of the past couple of years have been as much an understanding of values and how we live them as it has been a search for tools that make things easier.

When I look at these cards, they're a tangible reminder to choose that which is vital, and find the way to make it tenable.