A Chic Paris Holiday Season – Day 9 – Reduce Resentment
December 11, 2020
In A Chic and Simple Christmas, author Fiona Ferris briefly mentions feeling resentment when her unspoken expectations for a particular holiday experience were not met. Resentment seems like a strange topic to bring up when we are contemplating the supposedly festive and joyful holiday season. But as I look at my list of what I like about the holidays and the things that I don’t like, I can certainly remember past holidays when I felt quite a bit of irritation and resentment. I don’t like to admit even to myself that there were (many) instances when I begrudged even minimal effort for holiday activities that either were not at all what I liked or the activity may have been something I might like but I was just too tired to enjoy it.
Ina Garten of Barefoot Contessa cookbook fame has a habit of prepping for events that she plans by making a to-do list AND a detailed schedule for absolutely everything that she will need for the event. Ina is so organized that she starts her listed activities days before the event. (I would reference the specific cookbook where she discusses how she plans for a special event but all my Barefoot Contessa hardback cookbooks are 7,500 miles away in the USA and I am sitting in Paris as I type this. I think the discussion is in her second cookbook – Barefoot Contessa Parties!)
Following Fiona’s advice to put fun things into the holiday schedule and Ina’s advice to put all event details into a schedule, I am making a plan/schedule for the three weeks of December (December 13 through December 31.) At first blush, it sounds a bit over-the-top. I was hoping to have a relaxed holiday season and a 3-week daily plan for the season seems the opposite of relaxed. However, even though this holiday season 2020 has many fewer activities than any other Christmas-New Year’s season that I can remember, there are still holiday events and activities (and their related expectations) to orchestrate. Food is a big activity that needs to be managed. I learned with our recent Thanksgiving dinner that it is dangerously easy to go completely off the rails into last-minute stress-ville. By using the planner approach, I hope to identify and complete necessary tasks in a sane and orderly manner (hopefully, before the last minute.)
The main purpose of the “Master Schedule” is to identify what activities are planned and when and to show what pre-work needs to be completed when. Following this type of to-do list combined with a common-sense sleep schedule should help keep me feeling energized and on top of planned tasks. I’m hoping that this approach will help reduce feelings of stress and resentment.
I don’t need any special software or tools to do this exercise. A Gantt chart showing dependencies between tasks could be useful – but I think my life is simple enough that a piece of lined paper and some brightly colored sticky notes should suffice. I will post a photograph when I get the “Master Schedule” taped to the ‘fridge.
