Today is Christmas.

That means I'll be going off to my parents' home and stay there for three days, which also means I will not be available to view all the kind and friendly comments you might leave me ( 😉 ) , or leave encouraging/friendly words on your pages/blogs so I figure I should take this opportunity to express my wish that you all may have a very merry Christmas.

Normally at this time of the year, I feel a mixture of mild excitement, hopefulness and loathe – loathe because normally, I end up spending a significant portion of the three Christmas days being bored as social anxiety and the depressions they cause usually reduce and prevent my ability to talk to the family, thus keeping me entertained.

This time, the level of loathe is reduced significantly, because I have become better at opening up to the family after I started seeing a psychologist, and I've already learned to better appreciate the presence of the other family members in general. It also so happens that my parents have an image manipulating program known as Photoshop on two of their computers and I'm planning to use that to spend some time colouring a pencil drawing I did (not up on my gallery yet – I'll put it up when I get back).

In other words: I'm feeling a good deal more hopeful about having a good time this year – hopefully I'm right, because in my experience, having a good time can recharge you and lend you more energy to do something useful; such as figuring out the right kind of encouraging and friendly words to send your fellow sufferer. I figure everyone here knows that we could all use some encouragement from time to time and the best way to receive encouragement is to give it first, so I hope that when I get back, I'll be perfectly fit to do my best to cheer people up who need cheering up.

So, I hope to be seeing you again in the weekend with fresh ideas in my mind. Stay strong everyone.