I’m Not Like those Other Hoarders, Advent Sadvent, Gym Anticipation

I promised myself when I first started on this whole diamond painting journey that I was not going to be one of those crazy people with a gigantic stash who resorts to hiding purchases from their spouse and going into debt and secreting away unopened kits in hollowed-out mattress boxes. And for the most part, I’ve kept to that. However...there was a slight erosion to my morally lofty commitment of “finish one, buy one” when Diamond Art Club sent me a genius marketing mailer that totally worked on me. See, they “miss my sparkle” and wanted to offer me 20% off of a new kit! They miss my sparkle. My sparkle matters to them. I matter to them. In a double-whammy, I was also seduced with another 15% off flash offer ahead of their huge 30% off Black Friday sale. So I broke down. I bought three new kits, and two of them are massive, akin to the monstrous “Bathroom in Paris” painting that I’ve been working on for well over a year now. I stand by my choices. I’ve had my eye on these three kits for a while and it was just practical to order them on sale. Plus, I need them for material for the aforementioned YouTube channel that I’m slowly and methodically building, which has not gone public yet but that will by the start of 2025. So you see, it was just good, common sense. I’m not like those other diamond painting hoarders who clearly have a problem.

Along those lines, I used the long Thanksgiving weekend to take a break from Bathroom in Paris and bang out Diamond Dotz’s “Iris Sunset.” I’m astonished at the speed at which I was able to complete it, and very happy with the result:

Today is December 1^st and the beginning of Advent. It’s also two weeks away from the first anniversary of my mother’s death, and I am feeling none of the requisite joy and hope that is supposed to pervade the season. I suspect I’m also a little Vitamin D deficient and struggling more than usual with Seattle’s infamous Long Dark. I feel guilty for making a major religious holiday all about me and my grief, and not being able to adequately set that aside to feel the right feelings, and then feeling doubly guilty for griping openly at God about why the season of hope and joy has to fall right in the middle of the darkest, gloomiest, rainiest (in Seattle at least) time of year instead of like, June or some month where there is an inkling of light and it’s not raining 24/7. It’s a mess, folks.

Compounding the issue is that my fitness regime has fallen off a cliff and is now reduced to a bare-maintenance schedule since I quit the gym I was going to due to the sheer psychological strain it was causing me. It seemed to get more crowded, more cacophonous, and in more disrepair every time I went, until I finally couldn’t take it anymore and just canceled my membership. My neighborhood is desperate for more gyms, and some enterprising person finally figured that out and is opening a new, Purple-Themed Gym Franchise, which is on a much safer walking route from my apartment. It just hasn’t opened yet, and they seem to be moving really slowly according to what I see when peeping in through the opening in the brown paper over the windows. Their progress is not adequately swift in my opinion, and I really need them to speed it up a bit so I can get back to my real, actual workouts again, instead of faffing around at home with YouTube fitness videos and ratty old mats and bands.

Whatever the season brings you, I hope you can find a gift in it.

--Kristen McHenry