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I like Christmas. I like the gift-giving because I’m generally a very good guesser when it comes to figuring out what someone wants. I like the food because it involves showing off one of my few skills (The baking, not the consuming. Ahem.). And I like writing holiday cards.

Throughout my life (short, if you’re a octogenarian, long if you’re a caterpillar), I’ve built a reputation for writing really great cards. I’ve made people cry, made them laugh, made the least likely to write back respond within days. I have two penpals in the military, both in Iraq, but more impressively, I have an astounding 100+ greeting cards ready to be sent to eager friends. (I counted them just for this column, and I didn’t include the sheets of special handmade paper or sticker collection.)

The December month for me is filled with red candles, baked goods of all kinds and events, like last week’s gingerbread-house decorating party.
Gingerbread house!

The month is also packed with cards. Lots and lots of greeting cards.

I have about 75 people I MUST send a note to and about 50 others that I ought to write. This year, I’m having trouble getting started on my list. Perhaps it’s because, to date, I have received ONE card. And it’s from a former editor so it practically doesn’t count.

It’s also because the past few months have been some of the hardest in my life. Joyous and full of progression and movement, but hard. Very hard. So what do I write in my cards? I can muster the usual non-sequitur jokes, the goofy signature, but I worry I won’t have much news.

It’s my first year in the working world and I find it difficult to keep track of successes as concretely as I used to. In internships, you finish the employment. You get a recommendation. In school, you complete a course, you build toward your major. In my graduate school, you get a piece published. There are built-in ways of measuring progress and success. Two -ess’s I’m finding very important to my life.

In the year (almost) that I’ve lived in New York, I can tick only two things off my list. I got a challenging job and a beautiful apartment. They weren’t easy feats, and I am certainly not taking them for granted, but the -ess’s are scarcer than they used to be.

I’ve made up for it in other ways. I’ve become — those of you who know me will howl with laughter — a bikram yogi. This means I practice high-intensity, fast-paced yoga in a 120-degree room for 90 minutes, five days a week. This is not the focus-on-the-end-of-your-nose, tinkly music kind of yoga. Last week, I made it through my first session where I completed every posture. To put this into perspective, for the first week or two that you practice bikram, the goal is simply to stay in the room for the full 90 minutes.

I signed up for a pottery class, and I’m working on ways to practice (and hopefully revive) my Spanish skills. All of these are in an effort to create goals that can be easily understood in terms of accomplishment.

But holidays are about ham, not hamstrings. Chimneys, not kilns. Nobody wants a card about that.

Last week I spent more than $150 buying calendars for 2010. I bought one for my desk, my house, my purse, my parents and several friends. I bought them as serious gifts, as jokes, as reminders of our impending doom, and mid-binge, I realized jut how important and personal a calendar is.

At my job, we have a calendar function. When you add something to your schedule on any given day, you can make it public or private. Most of my appointments are public (which should tell you something about the riveting life I lead). In fact, months ago, for November 9, I wrote “turn 24, eat cake” and forgot to make it invisible to my colleagues.

I tend to put everything on my personal calendar. Birthdays (my own and others), errands, grocery lists, subway poetry. Library due dates (riveting, I say!).

My life is my Moleskine.

Which is why, when faced with the prospect of junking my 2009 datebook, I couldn’t. Couldn’t do it to 2008 either. In fact, I have a shoebox full of old event planners from my first year of college till now. I never look back through them, but it comforts me to think that if I were to turn to April 14, 2006, I could see that I had coffee with a friend who I’ve since grown away from, or on January 1, 2004, a first date that turned into a relationship. In some way, these calendars are like an unformed memoir. They’re an unedited record of the way I spend my time, which almost makes them more valuable in reconstructing the past than the greeting cards and movie stubs I ordinarily keep.

Having a crisp new calendar feels like a luxury. My first step is to fill out the first page with my name and address. In the Reward if Found section, I write “karmic retribution.” Then I add my friends’ birthdays and anniversaries. Because I’m 24, sitting on an island in the middle of the Marriagiatic Sea, I put five upcoming weddings in my book too.

I am very particular about how I treat my calendar in the early stages of our relationship. I use the same-colored pen for every appointment, the same style of annotation and try to write as daintily as my grandmother did.

It is truly a shame that neat writing does not prevent messy living.

The color, style and artistic interpretation of a calendar is also very important. For years, I bought wall calendars of my favorite artists — Alphonse Mucha and Erte — and a black Moleskine to carry with me. This year, I chose a calendar with art from Maxfield Parrish, known for his children’s book illustrations. It was this picture, Solitude, that did it for me:

Solitude (1931) by Maxfield Parrish

Something about living in New York, without air or ether or sunlight or silence, made this seem truly calming. I thought it might be nice to think of the art on my calendar as a form of fantasy along with the emptiness inside.

So really, $150 is a small price to pay for a blank page.

Stamp Champ

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