Ah Christmas, you’re here at last. It feels as though every year I count down the days until your arrival and then once you’ve arrived I lose that Christmassy feeling and struggle to rekindle it.
It’s almost always because I give myself far too much to do in December. The pre-Christmas to do list is a lovely one in my mind, but the reality never meets my expectations. In my head, I can see myself nestled at the foot of a beautifully decorated tree, writing my cards and wrapping presents with a classic like Home Alone on in the background. I always imagine that I’ll really enjoy the experience this year, take my time over it, savour it. The reality is never, ever, like that. These things always take longer than you think they will and, knowing that, every year I tell myself that this time year I will start earlier so that I don’t get caught out again. Yet every year I am faced with an ever-expanding to do list as Christmas Day creeps nearer.
This year has been no exception. In an effort to beat my annual pre-Christmas rush, I wrote my Christmas cards back in November and listed “make client dog treats and gift boxes” in my October goals and whilst I am very pleased that my cards are written, the story behind the treats is a very different one.
Every Christmas and Easter, I make treats for the dogs that I walk – my most spectacular yet being the dog-friendly Christmas puddings I made two years ago. I would deliver these treats in cellophane gift bags, but with the world growing ever-more eco-conscious, this year I vowed to make recyclable card gift boxes. After being disappointed with last year's effort, I wanted to make something to rival the success of the Christmas puddings when I had the idea to make tiny dog-friendly Christmas cakes!
When September arrived and my thoughts turned to Christmas preparations, I was so excited to make this year's treats. I planned on making them well ahead of time and freezing them so that it was one less thing for me to do in December. One morning in October, I began making the cake element of the treats but was so disappointed with the result that I had to bin the first attempt. This is the problem with making dog-friendly bakes. Although there are plenty of recipes available online, I tend to create my own from scratch, and this takes trial and error. Before remaking the cake, I set about sourcing the key ingredient for my dog-friendly icing, white chocolate drops (puppy milk drops / yoghurt drops) to give the cakes that classic white-iced finish. But could I find any? No. Zero, nip, nada. It would appear that such things have been discontinued, probably because they’re full of rubbish, but alas, my hopes of adorable little doggie Christmas cakes were dashed and I was bitterly disappointed about it.
In true Aislinn style, the next morning I was struck by a new wave of inspiration – dog-friendly mince pies! I didn’t think mince pies would freeze well, and with them being a simpler bake (or so I thought given that I make my own pastry all the time) I was happy to leave them until a couple of weeks before Christmas.
Now, somewhere in the midst of all of this, I discovered that the flat next door to mine was available to rent. It’s almost twice as big as my shoebox and has its own private garden, so unsurprisingly, I wanted it immediately. It’s owned by my current landlord and so as moves go it should have been easy, but any move even if it is only next door, is stressful. Taking down my shelves and filling the holes left behind meant that my once calm oasis of a home was quickly transformed into a bomb site. The flat is so small that losing my shelves meant I suddenly had things in need of homes and nowhere to put them. I have never before realised how much of an impact my surroundings have on my mood, but living in such a messy flat for the last ten days before I moved out drove me crazy. I couldn’t relax, my resilience was used up coping with the mess, I was exhausted and I felt run down.
So when Watson came over the weekend before I was due to move and I set about making these dog-friendly mince pies, I’m a little ashamed to say that he finally saw the old Aislinn. That Aislinn didn’t want to make the mince pies, she wanted to get cosy in bed and watch a Christmas film. Any baker will know that the key ingredient to all bakes is love and anything you make out of resentment is going to taste bitter. (This may be a little far fetched but grant me a little artistic license here, will you?) The point is, the pastry was a disaster (thank you, gluten free flour) and the filling didn’t go far enough. Every pastry round that I cut out broke before it made it to the tray and I became increasingly unhappy. I angrily kneaded the pastry in which I know see was a futile attempt to make it more elastic (again, thank you gluten-free flour) and threw every failed pie case back into the dough to start again with increasing vigour.
When I looked at the sorry excuse we had for mince pies, waiting to go into the oven I said “I hate this. They look awful. I’m not enjoying this. I don’t want to do this.” I’ve been in this situation plenty of times before. We all have. It’s usually something more serious, like driving down a scary, narrow, twisty, pitch-black country lane, late at night in the pouring rain when you don’t have a choice but to carry on. In those moments saying out loud “I hate this! I don’t want to do this!” feels good to me. Accepting that a situation is less than ideal makes it more manageable than if I pretended everything is ok. But these were just mince pies. They did not matter and they were not worth me getting so upset over them. Of course, it comes from the perfectionist in me wanting to feel useful and irreplaceable but on the surface, in that moment, I was getting upset over mince pies.
That was when Watson looked me in the eye and said “You don’t have to do this. You are the only person who is expecting you do to this.” But that’s just it. I’m my own worst enemy and my harshest critic. Aren’t we all?
Watson came into my life after (and if you believe in manifestation because) I started doing so much work on myself and he is a physical reminder of how far I’ve come. I sometimes catch myself starting the thought “how did I get so lucky to have met him?” before I remind myself that I worked really hard on myself to break the cycle of questionable love-interests. He is proof of that and so when he says something like this, so bluntly, it’s like hearing my own higher-self or subconscious speaking to me. He is so sensible and grounded that I can’t deny that what he says is quite often a very plain and simple truth. So hearing him tell me you are the only person who is expecting you do to this had the unexpected effect of breaking me out of my downward spiral. He was giving me permission to give up. Permission I would never have granted myself. And unbelievably, I did.
I binned the mince pies.
I did it angrily and still upset, feeling as though I’d failed and this year, there are no Christmas treats for my client dogs. I’m still a little disappointed about it as giving them out brings me so much joy, but right now my flat is a mess and I’m moving out today. I don’t have the energy to deliver the quality of treats that my wonderful clients deserve and there’s no reason why I can’t make them something lovely in the New Year, once I’ve settled into my new home.
The moral of this story is this: when life gives you a million and one things to do and you’re feeling overwhelmed, bin the mince pies. Make life easy for yourself, take shortcuts, postpone the things you can and say no altogether to the things that you don’t have to do. Ask for help, lower your expectations and above all, go easy on yourself.
This isn’t the post I had planned to end this year on.
I have a half-finished draft of another post called 12 Things I’ve Learnt This Year and it is a rather lovely round up of some of the best and most important lessons I have learned this year. The last lesson (the one I learned in December) was "Bin The Mince Pies" and is the story I have just told you. So when I was worrying about when I would get a chance to finish that post in between moving house and actually enjoying Christmas, I realised that I was doing it again. No one other than me was expecting me to finish that post and round up the year in that way, so I applied that very lesson and, to use my new motto, I binned the mince pies. I wrote this post instead and I did it in less than half the time. I’m very happy with this post but not as happy as I am with the fact that I took my own advice and gave up on the other one.
So here is where I will leave the blog for 2022. It has been an absolute pleasure to indulge the overthinker in me this year and write about the things that I really want to. For now I will wish you all a very Merry Christmas and the happiest of New Years and ask you to remember one thing:
Bin The Mince Pies.
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